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Gentoo, in particular, is very heavily dependent on Python. Its native package manager, Portage, is written entirely in Python, so the base OS install depends
by Taywee 5y ago
Gentoo, in particular, is very heavily dependent on Python. Its native package manager, Portage, is written entirely in Python, so the base OS install depends on functioning Python and many particular Python libs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_(software)
Gentoo is in a special place with packaging Python as well, with Portage's slot system allowing many parallel python versions, and having each python lib installed for all installed python versions at once. Removing a python version from PYTHON_TARGETS and uninstalling that python version will cause all the installed python libs to eventually rebuild and remove their installed packages for that version. Adding a python version to PYTHON_TARGETS will do the inverse.
So Gentoo needs to package python libs because the OS depends on them. A lot of other distros have dependency on Python and some Python libs as well, or have very close-to-core use depend on it. A lot of the SELinux tools are Python, last I checked. So there needs to be at least some mechanism for including python libs in-distro.
- twelvechairs 5y agoThis is right, but also at a fundamental level Gentoo's 'killer feature' has always been a package manager (Portage) that is flexible, modular, portable, maintainable, highly-compatible, efficient. Another package management system over the top of this (pip, flit for python) that doesn't share the same values - in this case doesn't care so much about backwards-compatibility or efficient builds, really breaks Gentoo's potential to provide that experience to its users that is the headline of why people use Gentoo. And the Gentoo devs are therefore forced into filling some of that gap and there's some uneasy compromises in the process.