No Python in Red Hat Linux 8? | Hacker News Reader

No Python in Red Hat Linux 8?

developers.redhat.com

19 pointsjandeboevrie6 comments

well obviously the default should be Python 3, but I guess no default is better than a default of Python 2. I like that they separated the "user-space" Python from what the bundled tools use as a dependency.

Red hat's engineers don't think it's quite that obvious, and given that in the past I've seen userland tools that everyone kind of assumes will just work break if you have python3 as default, I agree with them.

I can see you're all aboard the "why isn't everyone using python3 already" train and that's fine, but not every python codebase can just be thrown through six, and even the ones that can aren't always actively maintained. This is yet another example of how bad the python devs screwed the pooch on the 2->3 migration. We're on this wild ride for the long haul I guess.

/usr/bin/python can point to either /usr/bin/python3 or (as PEP 394 currently recommends) /usr/bin/python2

  $ alternatives --config python

FWIU, there are ubi8/python-27 and ubi8/python-36 docker images. IDK if they set /usr/bin/python out of the box? Changing existing shebangs may not be practical for some applications (which will need to specify 'python4' whenever that occurs over the next 10 supported years of RHEL/CENTOS 8)

The problem with the decision to leave out python is that many enterprise environments are firewalled and locked down and trying to get anything auhorized through corporate IT departments is a nightmare, and in fact practically impossible. In such a case, any python is better than none.

I think someone commented on Python in the redhat 8 article earlier this week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19852639

I’m running RHEL 8 on my laptop, you can simply install Python 3 via DNF/Yum

Reply on news.ycombinator.com