On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:32:50 +0200
Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Richard Yao <ryao@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >> I've always thought renaming python-3 to python3 is
> >> faux-namespacing, and the thing SLOTs are supposed to help out
> >> with. Why aren't SLOTs helping us with this?
> >
> > Portage will attempt to upgrade software to a newer SLOT if it will
> > satisfy a dependency. This works when you cannot select versions via
> > eselect, but it causes problems when you can. There is no way to
> > tell it to prefer the selected version upgrades in other slots
> > unless the selected version cannot satisfy it.
> 
> Your last sentence fails to parse for me, perhaps expand one of the
> "it"s?
> 
> > I think that having to switch back would cause far less pain than
> > the current situation would, assuming that we ever do. If the python
> > developers refuse to make python 2.8, it is likely that someone
> > else will.
> 
> Please don't hope for a 2.8, it's simply not going to happen.
> 
> >> I agree that installing both is probably overkill for most users. I
> >> think the solution is somewhere outside the dev-lang/python
> >> package, though, in having the system set or portage or whatever
> >> the hell it is that first pulls in python prefer python-2.
> >
> > This would require amending the package manager specification.
> 
> Well, maybe we should explore that option. It would seem to solve a
> real problem that doesn't just apply to python. For example, the SLOT
> value could be prefixed with something to indicate that it should not
> be selected for upgrades automatically (i.e. other slots should be
> preferred).

[facepalm]

Or maybe we should explore the option of fixing python.eclass to not
depend on random python versions implicitly?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny