Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> wrote:
I don't agree with your analysis.
I disagree with your disagreement.Python3 is fundamentally incompatible with Python. It is a similar language, but not the same one. Some packages work on both. Most do not. Some will be ported such that the same source runs on Python and Python3. Some will be ported by being in C, and thus the port being easy with a few ifdefs (e.g. lxml), in the same source. Some will be ported by having a build step that can convert the Python source into Python3 source (e.g. python-apt). And some will be ported by having different upstream source tarballs for Python and Python3 (e.g. chardet).
It seems to me that given that the source is often going to be different, having separate binary packages is also a sane thing to do.
I'd hope that Debian keeps Python around for /at least/ the next couple of releases -- there is a lot of code out there written for Python that isn't ported yet, and porting much of it is not trivial. Some might never be ported. Over time, Python3 will become more prevalent, and once little enough code requires Python, it can of course go away. But that's gonna be a long long time from now...
James