Re: PEP 394 and shebang lines for /usr/bin/python2 scripts

[Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>]

On 25 July 2013 07:52, Piotr Ożarowski <piotr@debian.org> wrote:

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...".

I would have thought that is exactly the reason why we should start planning this early. Rather then at the last minute.

If we plan this early, we don't need to go through and change everything at once, rather we can do it happens to be convenient.

We have already done this with shell scripts that have bashisms - we now say that they should have "#!/bin/bash", not "#!/bin/sh". We did this a long time before we considered officially changing the /bin/sh symlink. I don't see why python should be any different.

As for supporting older Debian releases. Fair point. However all you need is to type:

ln -s /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python2

Sometimes I worry that Debian is becoming to conservative.