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I don't really understand the fuss about the Python thing. `#!/usr/bin/python2` should work on pretty much any system, not just an Arch Linux system. Whatever h

I don't really understand the fuss about the Python thing. `#!/usr/bin/python2` should work on pretty much any system, not just an Arch Linux system. Whatever happened to "explicit is better than implicit"? If the Python community eventually wants Python 3 to become the default, they will all have to deal with this issue sooner or later; Arch is just opting for "sooner", as that's in line with the way Arch approaches all changes. The real problem is that there are two incompatible versions of Python, and most Python developers give too little thought to forward compatibility to include an extra '2' in their shebang lines in order to disambiguate their intentions. Just because python == python2 on most systems today does not mean the status quo will forever be the same, nor that it ought to be. In any case, there is no problem making Python scripts work on Arch, even if they use the ambiguous shebang. All of the official packages work out of the box with no problem, of course, and anything unofficial (i.e. AUR packages) just needs a single, trivial sed command added to the PKGBUILD. Arch is not "maintaining a separate fork of each Python package". This is the opposite of true; in fact Arch packages are, on the whole, far closer to their upstream counterparts than the same packages from other distros, where it is common for huge divergences to be made from the upstream defaults. Hardly worth ranting about. You come across as if the Arch developers viciously attacked your family or something. Maybe it's just a distro with different values than yours, man! Relax, there are lots of other choices! It's not supposed to appeal to everyone, but for those of us who align well with the Arch "philosophy", it's fantastic.

klodolph 14y ago
There is a serious problem when "pretty much any system" excludes both Debian and Mac OS X, and I don't know which others. The "python2" symlink is frighteningly recent in the Python world, and some of us like to support systems other than the bleeding edge. It makes me kind of skeptical that you read my post, because this was the main point of my complaint. My point is not that it's hard to get Python scripts to run on Arch, my point is that I shouldn't have to do any work at all. You can see a summary: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ (note it's not yet been accepted) "Until the conventions described in this PEP are more widely adopted, having python invoke python2 will remain the recommended option." "This feature [python2 symlink] will first appear in the default installation process in CPython 2.7.3." Python 2.7.3 was released in August 9, 2012, slightly over one month ago. That means that if you are running a Python 2 that is more than one month old, you won't have the symlink unless you make it yourself, or your distribution provides one for you.

klodolph 14y ago

There is a serious problem when "pretty much any system" excludes both Debian and Mac OS X, and I don't know which others. The "python2" symlink is frighteningly recent in the Python world, and some of us like to support systems other than the bleeding edge. It makes me kind of skeptical that you read my post, because this was the main point of my complaint. My point is not that it's hard to get Python scripts to run on Arch, my point is that I shouldn't have to do any work at all. You can see a summary: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ (note it's not yet been accepted) "Until the conventions described in this PEP are more widely adopted, having python invoke python2 will remain the recommended option." "This feature [python2 symlink] will first appear in the default installation process in CPython 2.7.3." Python 2.7.3 was released in August 9, 2012, slightly over one month ago. That means that if you are running a Python 2 that is more than one month old, you won't have the symlink unless you make it yourself, or your distribution provides one for you.