Python2 EOL and moving towards Python3
With the Python2 EOL finalized (https://pythonclock.org/) for 2020 it's again
time to ping/pester about getting packages ready for Python3. The Python2 EOL
doesn't mean that Python2 will go away from the archive any time soon, however
even third party projects already have announced an EOL for supporting Python2
(like NumPy). At DebCamp 2017, Stefano Rivera, Chris Lamb and I sat together to
identifiy packages which need work, and Chris implemented some new lintian flags
which are now all emitted as warnings. The numbers are huge, however I plan to
file bug reports (one for earch source package) at some time, because bug
reports are much easier to have a status or a discussion, than just having
lintian tags. It would be nice if people could identify false positives which
maybe can be fixed in lintian before filing bug reports for the packages.
The tags are:
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/build-depends-on-python-sphinx-only.html
546 tags, should be easily fixable, mostly packaging issues. Are there any apps
like sphinx which should use Python3 instead of Python2?
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/alternatively-build-depends-on-python-sphinx-and-python3-sphinx.html
17 tags
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/new-package-should-not-package-python2-module.html
287 tags, at some point we maybe should make that an (overridable) lintian -F
flag, however there are applications packaged which are Python2 only.
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/python-foo-but-no-python3-foo.html
1212 tags. Should only be overridden if the package has Python3 functionality
under another name (like the gtk2 bindings stack).
https://lintian.debian.org/tags/dependency-on-python-version-marked-for-end-of-life.html
2212 tags (and lintian lab still running to add more ...)
Looks overwhelming, and people maybe should break down any planned work to some
subtask (like making some blends Python2 free), or getting Python2 off CD images.
Ideally we should end up with a list of packages which are not ported to Python3
upstream, and then see what should be done about a Python2 removal in 202x ...
Matthias
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