Now in order to support RHEL 8, you have to tell them to also have their sys admin install your preferred python.
A better and less bespoke to RHEL solution imo would have been to make an anaconda install or virtualenv the default python for each user.
Also, FFS, why can’t pyc files have a bytecode format version number embedded in them, or at least be called .pyc3 by python 3?
The whole ecosystem needs to solve the packaging problem, or get replaced by some other language ASAP. Instead, it’s breaking entire distros with its packaging tire fire.
For many python projects I’ve dealt with, it is easier to reimplement that dang thing in some other language than make the python build reliable, secure and redistributable.
With C++ for example you are usually either targeting C++11, C++14, or C++17 (or if you're really unfortunate, C++03). The set of features in the language only changes every few years.
Granted it's still possible that someone could have an old compiler that doesn't implement the advertised standard correctly, but that's a bug, not a deliberate design choice.
And if you are talking about which version is shipped with a distro, then RHEL7 ships with gcc 4.8, which support only parts of c++14, while for example the latest Ubuntu LTS ships GCC 7,3, meaning you get full C++17 support.
Don't get me wrong, the Python packaging situation is not very clean. But it is far from being an exception, and people complaining about it are just spreading FUD.
This argument is almost cyclical.
> With C++ for example you are usually either targeting C++11, C++14, or C++17 (or if you're really unfortunate, C++03). The set of features in the language only changes every few years.
C++ went from glacial-pace changes - 85 / 98 / 03 / 11 -- to much faster ones: 14, 17, 20. This change in standards behavior was motivated by closing the gap with feature-rich, faster-moving languages like Python (Java, C#, etc).
Python makes language changes somewhat rarely, but library changes more often. The majority of the time, those library changes are brand new functionality.
Similarly, if you require pandas like I do, there's a fairly comprehensive baseline of functionality you can expect regardless of what environment it comes from.
For example, out of about 50 or so /usr/bin/python scripts I see in a RHEL7's /usr/bin I can't find a single one that runs on python3.
No individual user is going to be fixing this. It's a very silly and shortsighted move on RedHat's part.
37 /usr/bin/python3
4 /usr/bin/python3.5
4 /usr/bin/python
3 /usr/bin/python2.7
2 /usr/bin/python2
speedtest, speedtest-cli, dh_python2, apt-offline
So two from ubuntu/debian, and two from a package
Above, we're discussing some build system where someone hasn't done this work. Most collections of python code in the world (I'm going to hazard a guess significantly upward of 90%) just use /usr/bin/python or /usr/bin/env python.
That's the nature of the problem.
> For example, out of about 50 or so /usr/bin/python scripts I see in a RHEL7's /usr/bin
The actual subject is CoolGuySteve's build system, which is likely to look like my example of RHEL7 rather than yours of ubuntu. The vast majority of environments look like RHEL7 or CoolGuySteve's build system where #!/usr/bin/python is the norm.
On RHEL 7 (and earlier) `/usr/bin/python` must be the Python 2 the system shipped with or your break `yum` and other admin tools. When people try to install their own python by doing a `make install` as root, `yum` breaks and it's hard to recover the system.
What the article is saying is that RHEL 8 addresses this by having a platform python that the system tools use. So RHEL 8 tools will not use /usr/bin/python
Offering advice about how to write new software does nothing to help with the frustration he highlighted: His existing build systems will break. Build systems are especially frustrating as they tend to have hacked-together code that no one really wants to look at.
People will often work around this by installing a python2 as /usr/bin/python. At the end of the day this change results in a less predictable platform. On previous RHEL systems I know what /usr/bin/foo is -- it's predictable given the major version of the distro. But now I won't know what /usr/bin/python is on RHEL8. It will be uniquely different and that's not a good thing.
One interesting note - MacOS doesn't have a /usr/bin/python2 (at least, not at the time of this writing). It supplies /usr/bin/python, and also /usr/bin/python2.7.
That might not matter at all, but it's worth noting.
Sigh.