Re: [gentoo-python] Python 3 in Gentoo

[Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org>]

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).

Cheers,

Dirkjan