Re: [gentoo-dev] unsanctioned python 2.7 crusade

[David Seifert]

On Thu, 2019-12-05 at 14:59 +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 2:56 PM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 8:42 AM Jason A. Donenfeld <zx2c4@g.o
> > > wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Aaron has marked tons of important and useful Python 2.7 packages
> > > for removal:
> > >
> > > Can we not do this prematurely? I've revered this commit until
> > > such a
> > > thing an be appropriately agreed upon.
> >
> > Might make sense to wait to mask them at the same time as masking
> > python 2.7 itself?  Maybe file a bug if not already done to make
> > maintainers aware that this is coming?
> >
> > I assume the python team is the one deciding when python 2.7 has to
> > go
> > (after all, who else is going to maintain it?).  The fact that this
> > is
> > about a month off did come up in another recent thread but I don't
> > think it was intended as a formal announcement.
>
> It's one thing to mask python libraries in general. If gentoo isn't
> going to support 2.7, then those libraries don't make sense to  keep
> around.
>
> It's quite another to mask random packages that have USE flags to
> optionally support whatever python 2.7 library. If you're going to
> last rites these, talk with the maintainer first, and only then, send
> emails one at a time. Doing that en masse isn't appropriate.
>
> On another topic, I'd prefer for python 2.7 not to be removed from
> gentoo. Tons of code still uses it.
>

Sorry, but I'll have to disagree with you on this.

We're removing Java too from Gentoo (more implicitly than explicitly),
because the Maven/Gradle ecosystem doesn't seem to scale. There's tons
of code that uses java and java binaries too, and yet we're removing
it. Python 2 is EOL in a few weeks. We have also removed Qt4 and lost a
number of useful applications with it. At some point, we're not going
to maintain a dead interpreter anymore.