Python default versions

[Kubilay Kocak]

On 13/11/2015 3:02 AM, Craig Rodrigues wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 4:45 AM, Carmel NY <carmel_ny at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> I was just wondering if there is any serious consideration to at least
>> changing the FreeBSD default version to "3.x".
> 
> 
> 
> It's actually a lot of work to update all the Python packages to work
> with Python 3, since at the language level there are changes which make
> valid Python 2 code a syntax error in Python 3.  In the Linux world, both
> Ubuntu and Fedora have huge
> efforts to make Python 3 the default.  They are not done yet:
> 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Python/3
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Python_3_as_Default
> 
> Probably when one or both of those projects are done,
> it will be much easier for FreeBSD to change the default,
> since the Linux guys will have fixed a lot of the packages that FreeBSD
> uses.
> Most likely they will be done by next year.
> 
> --
> Craig


It's also important to remember the distinction between 'defaulting' to
3.x, and requiring all things to work with 3.x. I don't believe we'd
necessarily require the latter, in requiring/wanting the former, as long
as the 2.x stack remained fully supported.

One of the things we'd *certainly* need before tackling this, is the
official package repositories building *at least* 2.7 *and* the default
3.x version of packages. Ideally all python versions.