On Saturday, January 23, 2016 08:50:49 PM Barry Warsaw wrote: > On Jan 23, 2016, at 03:38 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote: > >Personally I seriously dislike the trend to call Python Python 2 (and I > >still thing approving a pep to invent /usr/bin/python2 because Arch went > >insane was a horrible idea). There's an earlier spot in the document > >where it says that everything refers to python and python3 unless it's > >explicit. I'll make this spot /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages and any > >risk of ambiguity is, I think, resolved. > > I'll leave it to you, but my take on it is that "Python" is the generic term > for the language and its specification. "Python 2" v "Python 3" provides > disambiguation when you're talking about specific major versions of the > language. "Python 3.5" and such usually describe specific releases of the > CPython interpreter implementation (note how "CPython" is used to > disambiguate between alternative implementations of the language > specification). Finally, python2.7, python3.4 and such are used to > describe the executables that provide the versions (e.g. mentally prepend > them with /usr/bin). > > All of this, except the last point perhaps, is orthogonal to the > /usr/bin/python2 issue you mention. > > Back to the original point, to me saying "Python" and "Python 3" is > confusing or misleading, given the above definitions. It's confusing > because "Python 3" *is* Python, so what's the difference? It's misleading > because it implies that somehow "Python 3" isn't "Python". > > >> B.2. dh_python2 and dh_python3 > >> > >> Again, I think here you want to say "Python2 and Python3" to disambiguate > >> between generic Python. > > > >If I say Python and Python3, what version can the one that's not Python3 > >possibly be? I don't think it's any less confusing than starting to call > >what we've always called "Python" "Python 2". > > See above, but to rephrase, "Python" is ambiguous in this context because > you could be talking about Python-the-language, not > Python-some-release-version. I don't particularly agree, but if that's correct, then there's a large amount of change needed throughout the policy. These certainly aren't the only places this comes up. Ambiguous or not, I think the policy is mostly consistent in using python and python3 vice python2 and python3. At this point I think internal consistency is probably more important, so if someone wants to go through and make all the python's that should be python2, etc then please send in a patch. Scott K
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