Re: [gentoo-project] For next council meeting: moving Portage to python3.6+

[Daniel Robbins]

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 10:55 AM, R0b0t1 <r030t1@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>
> I am a stain upon this mailing list and my opinion is of no
> consequence, but I think moving directly to 3.6 would be the best
> option. Python 3.5 is a very strange situation and has some half
> finished features despite being a full release. It is very likely the
> release of 3.6 was rushed to fix some of what was "wrong" in 3.5
> (mainly missing async features, but there are many).[1] These new
> features are useful enough that they will likely outweigh any
> additional work involved in adopting 3.6.
>

I agree. I feel like 3.5 is half-finished when it comes to its async
implementation, and 3.6+ should be the goal.

Let me put it this way to everyone -- I think we should standardize on
3.6+. It would be good if we could have consensus on that. I am pretty
confident that this is the 'right answer'.

As to *when* we do this, that I do not have the answer to. That is why I
raised it for consideration by others.

However, I see lots of benefits of making this switch sooner rather than
later. Consider that 2.7 stops being supported upstream in 2 years.

I look at it this way -- the effort we spend maintaining and working within
the code base that offers 2.7 support over the next 2 years could be used
*instead* to remove lots of cruft from the code base and standardize on
something we know we are going to need to standardize on *anyway*. That
puts us 2 years ahead of where we would be if we delay the decision.

People are willing to do the work. Mgorny expressed concern on IRC that
this would impact EAPI 7 efforts. I don't think that is the case. If
anything, it puts us in a better position.

In fact, if assurance is needed that EAPI 7 is not impacted, or that we
would work extra hard on EAPI 7 to in turn gain support for dropping lower
versions of python, I would see that as a possibility -- i.e. "we agree to
move to 3.6+ with the understanding that it should not impact EAPI 7
development."

Best,

Daniel