Re: /usr/bin/python2 shebangs
On November 1, 2016 10:28:01 AM EDT, Barry Warsaw <barry@debian.org> wrote:
>Over in #834193, a user is asking for a /usr/bin/pip2 to mirror
>/usr/bin/pip
>because some uses cases apparently prefer pip2 over pip. That seems
>like a
>reasonable request on the face of it, and easy to support.
>
>However, I thought, well why not shebang pip2 to /usr/bin/python2
>because 1)
>it would parallel the script name; 2) I do think it would be in our
>best long
>term interest to start shebanging system scripts explicitly with
>python3 or
>python2 as appropriate. Yes, I know that we don't intend to make
>/usr/bin/python be Python 3 any time soon, but maybe someday we'll
>change our
>minds and PEP 394 will embrace that strategy across Linux distros.
>
>In any case, it produces a mild lintian complaint:
>
>E: python-pip: python-script-but-no-python-dep usr/bin/pip2
>
>Of course the /usr/bin/python shebanged /usr/bin/pip doesn't produce
>that
>warning, and the package's Depends properly has ${python:Depends}. I
>think
>lintian is wrong, but I'd like to hear any other opinions.
I don't think /usr/bin/python should ever point to a python3 version. It should be dropped when python2.7 is removed. I think the existence of /usr/bin/python2 is a limited to a work around for a specific distros insanity. There's no need to encourage it's use in Debian as that particular insanity hasn't and won't (as long as I'm a python*-defaults co-maintainer).
Scott K
P.S. But I think you already knew how I feel about it. ;-)
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