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

[Benda Xu]

Hi Daniel,

Daniel Robbins <drobbins@××××××.org> writes:

> Zac Medico and I would like to discuss the following at the next
> council meeting: moving Portage to support only python3.6+. One of the
> primary benefits of this change is that it will allow us to use
> python's native async implementation as we look to make Portage faster
> at a critical time when we are looking to improve Portage
> performance. As we approach the stabilization of python3.6 in Gentoo,
> it seems like a good time to discuss the process of jettisoning 2.7
> support and standardizing on 3.6 for Portage.
>
> Right now, a custom 'asyncio-like' set of classes is used for async in
> Portage. This limits interoperability with other async-friendly python
> modules and produces additional maintenance overhead for the project.
>
> Maybe even more importantly, 3.6+ compatibility also gives us the
> ability to use many other new language features and reduce the
> maintenance overhead of having 2.7 compatibility for the extensive
> Portage code-base. We expect that this will improve the velocity of
> Portage development, provide opportunities to improve Portage
> functionality and also allow us clean up a lot of unnecessarily
> complex code (and eliminate code) that is there only to ensure
> compatibility with 2.7.

Thanks, I think drop 2.7 is that way to move forward.  

A sidenode: At present python-3.x cannot be compiled on linux-2.6.8
(RHEL/Centos 4) or linux-2.6.16 (RHEL/Centos 5) with Gentoo Prefix,
unless glibc is patched.  I am writing up a patch for review to
reintroduce glibc-2.16 and fix glibc-2.19, for them to support
python-3.x builds.

Yours,
Benda