[Barry Warsaw, 2013-07-24]
> Can you or Jakub elaborate on *why* you think it's a bad idea?
because our users trust us.
They have their own scripts and they don't want to be forced to do
unnecessary work, nobody wants. Using /usr/bin/python2 in Debian
packages sends a wrong message to them.
When my co-worker (who doesn't use Debian on his desktop/laptop
machines) asked me if Debian will change the /usr/bin/python symlink
anytime soon and I told him "over my (or python2.X's) dead body", he
responded with: "that's why I use Debian on all my servers - it's
STABLE! I don't have to worry about crap like this...".
If /usr/bin/python will never point to something other than
/usr/bin/python2.X as long as there's a python2.X package in Debian
(in 2015 or 2025, it doesn't matter), why should we use
/usr/bin/python2? This IS a change and thus a potential
problem/bug/misunderstanding/possibility to break something
("packages are shipping scripts with /usr/bin/python2 shebangs now? Good,
let's change /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/pypy...").
We are providing /usr/bin/python2 symlink to make our users life easier
(to make Arch users' scripts work on Debian). We will not change
/usr/bin/python symlink to *not* make our users life (a bit) harder
and we should not do anything that would make our users feel confused -
using /usr/bin/python2 in our packages could make our users think that
they have to do the same.
It's good that there are distributions like Arch which do painful
experiments. I love the fact that there are more than one distributions
out there. I love to have a choice... and having a choice also means we
don't have to follow other distribution's choices - nobody can force us,
not even a PEP.
--
Piotr Ożarowski Debian GNU/Linux Developer
www.ozarowski.pl www.griffith.cc www.debian.org
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