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Python 2 removed from Debian

bugs.debian.org

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Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#41

Post by nequo »

killjoywashere wrote: post #24

I feel like there was a batch of big software from the 90s and early 2000s that took a really long time to die, and they're not necessarily dead yet: Windows XP. Java. Python 2. IPv4. X11. Free/Open/NetBSD (1). Hell, I was using (adding new data to) a MUMPS-based system on OpenVMS until 2018. But I feel like we are seeing fewer new widely-publicized death marches now, despite many more projects starting. What changed…

> (1) As an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26168596

Usenet activity is a very odd measure of deadness to use today.

Although maybe that is exactly what you mean: that the BSDs were already dying in the Usenet era and are still not dead? I think even if they were dying back then, over the course of the past 20 years they may have found their niches to heal and survive in.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#42

Post by groestl »

bmitc wrote: post #19
nibbleshifter wrote: post #7

print "goodbye, sweet prince" I've been slowly porting a lot of my legacy code from 2 to 3 on an as-needed basis, there's a few bits though that are just too huge/crusty/etc that they will never get ported.

Doesn't this say something about the language if it's been so difficult for people to migrate from 2 to 3? Yes, it was a major version change, but it doesn't bode well for arguments that Python is a good language to do long-term, maintainable, and large-scale development. Sure, now things are "settled" with 3, but Python continues to get more features. It just doesn't look good for the language if even doing a langua…

The string/bytes encoding lead to some weird runtime problems in a codebase I maintain (the quality of which is probably not that great to begin with). Also changes in non-statically compiled languages will always be a bit tricky. In general, a comprehensive unit test suite is required to step in for the compiler, otherwise there's no confident refactoring. But python is sooooo ubiquitous it's crazy, and most code does not have unit tests to make up for missing compile time checks. The codebase I mentioned earlier certainly doesn't.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#43

Post by onatrain »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
bmitc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this say something about the language if it's been so difficult for people to migrate from 2 to 3? Yes, it was a major version change, but it doesn't bode well for arguments that Python is a good language to do long-term, maintainable, and large-scale development. Sure, now things are "settled" with 3, but Python continues to get more features. It just doesn't look good for the language if even doing a langua…

Let me be blunt here: Python sucks, but that's at the level of 'programming languages people complain about and programming languages nobody uses'. However the Python libraries absolutely rock and the ease with which you can get really performant number crunching code out of what is nominally an interpreted language is amazing. Statistics, machine learning, engineering, the notebooks etc, I would not pick anything el…

> there isn't a single piece of code that I ever put together that worked longer than a few years out of the box without some breaking change

The best practice, which prevents this issue, is to use envs, (as well as pinning your dependencies for any given project in a committable artifact).

(Seems like a lot of people are using system Python, which isn't really recommended.)

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#44

Post by whirlwin »

As mentioned by several people already, the migration process from 2 to 3 was really painful.

It will be easier for the Python core maintainers, but introducing a breaking change with the intent that that version 2 will be deprecated has probably caused more distress overall, especially maintainers of other open source projects which rely on a specific python version.

Let's never have the same kind of breaking change again, please.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#45

Post by tacker2000 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #24

I feel like there was a batch of big software from the 90s and early 2000s that took a really long time to die, and they're not necessarily dead yet: Windows XP. Java. Python 2. IPv4. X11. Free/Open/NetBSD (1). Hell, I was using (adding new data to) a MUMPS-based system on OpenVMS until 2018. But I feel like we are seeing fewer new widely-publicized death marches now, despite many more projects starting. What changed…

Sorry but this is an ill informed comment. Most of the stuff you are talking about is not bad, just legacy. And what are you saying about java? How is that bad?

Also poeple dont like to change shit that runs well, thats why we have so much legacy stuff around.

In the real world, it doesnt matter if your whole damn business is still running their warehouse system on a DOS program running in a god damn DOS emulator on a Win xp VM running on some linux box. What matters is that it works.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#46

Post by justin_oaks »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

And not a decade too soon. The Python 2 -> Python 3 migration will be studied for a long time as an example how not to release a new version of your language or library, right next to that Angular thingy. The number of headaches I've had to deal with because of this over the years have just about soured me on the whole Python offering, and I used to be a pretty big fan. Great that Debian finally pulls the plug on it,…

Forgive my ignorance, but what should have been done instead of the way the Python 2 to 3 migration happened?

I know that Python 2 has stuck around for far longer than anyone wanted and that people were (are?) hesitant to migrate from 2 to 3, but I'm not sure what decisions contributed to that.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#49

Post by chungy »

captn3m0 wrote: post #5
chungy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that Debian 10 and 11 will continue getting security patches for some time. All the same, it's great progress. :)

Debian 11 goes EOL in August 2026.

It's pretty bold to pin such a specific date when the release date of Debian 12 is not yet known. Debian releases are fully supported for one year after the next release launches, and then the LTS projects keep it going for another 5~7 years.

Re: Python 2 removed from Debian

#50

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Glad this is finally mostly over, but... that was bad. I wonder if the energy that had to be put into this migration by everyone involved was worth what seems to be relatively small improvements.

The print-as-a-statement was ugly but convenient and didn't seem like a big deal, the integer division was something that you could live with once you knew about it (and you still need to know what the current behavior is), and the new string types make code more verbose, and the way they were handled introduced countless hard to find bugs during the migration.

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