Re: [gentoo-dev] unsanctioned python 2.7 crusade

[David Seifert <soap@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, 2020-01-12 at 17:07 -0500, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> On 12/5/2019 09:24, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 8:59 AM Jason A. Donenfeld <zx2c4@gentoo.org
> > > wrote:
> > > It's quite another to mask random packages that have USE flags to
> > > optionally support whatever python 2.7 library. If you're going
> > > to
> > > last rites these, talk with the maintainer first, and only then,
> > > send
> > > emails one at a time. Doing that en masse isn't appropriate.
> > 
> > ++ - I have no idea if that happened.  For anything USE-controlled
> > it
> > would make more sense to file a bug or mask the package-flag combo
> > itself.
> > 
> > > On another topic, I'd prefer for python 2.7 not to be removed
> > > from
> > > gentoo. Tons of code still uses it.
> > > 
> > 
> > I'm sure a million people would share that preference.  I'm not
> > sure
> > what the upstream/security status is of 2.7.  Obviously to keep it
> > around it would need to be reasonably secure, and somebody within
> > Gentoo would have to want to maintain it.  That's basically the
> > criteria for keeping anything like this around.  If somebody
> > stepped
> > up and said "I'm maintaining 2.7 and here is why it will remain
> > secure..." I doubt they'd get a lot of resistance.
> > 
> 
> I'm late to the party as usual.  Seems upstream plans a final 2.7.18
> security update in April of 2020, then they will consider the 2.7
> branch
> EOL.  They say most of these updates were done in 2019, and so are
> still
> technically sticking to their mantra of no more updates after
> 01/01/2020.
> 
> PEP 373 covers this:
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/#release-schedule
> 
> """
> Planned future release dates:
> 
>     2.7.18 code freeze January, 2020
>     2.7.18 release candidate early April, 2020
>     2.7.18 mid-April, 2020
> """
> 
> IMHO, I think we should retain 2.7.x compatibility for 1 year AFTER
> the
> release of 2.7.18.  This provides some time for people to transition
> systems
> off of 2.7-dependent packages.
> 
> It might be worthwhile to treat the removal of Python-2.7 from the
> tree in
> the same manner as an EAPI deprecation and removal, given how
> ingrained it
> is due to its longevity.  That will minimize the whiplash-effect of
> emerge
> complaining about slot conflicts and dependency conflicts.  Like I
> just ran
> into w/ setuptools-45.0.0.0's release.
> 

Thanks for volunteering to help us manage the ton of packages that have
dropped py2 in the mean time. I wasn't aware you were part of the
python team, but I must have been mistaken!