Anybody still using Python2?

[Hal Murray]

Thanks.

> It's not about "with" in the sense of what's on the system; it's about
> what Python version *their code* works with.  Due to the large
> incompatibilities between Python 2 and Python 3, it takes serious work to
> update existing Python 2 code to work with Python 3.  And such fixes
> often impact code paths which are rarely used and poorly tested, leading
> to long-lurking bugs associated with such updates.  For example, SCons
> was still fixing bugs related to Python 3 long after it dropped support
> for Python 2 (making the "just run it with Python 2" workaround
> impossible). 

That makes sense.  But I'm missing the next step.  Do sites still using 
mostly Python 2 have Python 3 available?  Are they writing new code in 
Python 2 or 3?

Can we build *with* 3 for *2* on those sites?  Or would we even need to?  
If they have 3 available, is it good enough if our code says it wants to 
run on "python3" rather than "python"?

Does our code work in the build *with* 3 for *2* mode?  I expect if it 
finds 3 so it is building on 3 that it will build for 3 without a 
configure option that doesn't yet exist.

We have:
      --python=PYTHON     python binary to be used [Default: 
/usr/bin/python]
But that doesn't say if it's *with* or *for* so I assume the split doesn't 
yet exist.


> Is there some specific reason to want to move to a newer waf, or is it
> just a case of wanting the latest shiny new thing?  Given the
> excruciatingly poor state of waf documentation, the "if it ain't broke
> don't fix it" philosophy is generally a safer choice. 

Not quite the shiny thing, but close.  There is:
  ntpsec doesn't build with waf >= 2.1.0
  https://gitlab.com/NTPsec/ntpsec/-/issues/830
but that's based on:
  If not using the waf script bundled with ntpsec (as might be 
  required by distro-specific packaging guidelines),

It would be nice to get the python 2 tangle out of the way.  In one sense, 
it's not a big deal.  On the other hand, it's several minor pains in the 
ass.

How many people/distros are running python 2 without python 3 being 
available and also want to run ntpsec?



-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.