On Wed, Feb 24, 2021, at 09:08, Paul Moore wrote:
I don't use Linux much, and I'm definitely not familiar with Linux distribution tools, but from what I can gather Linux distributions have made the choices:
1. Write key operating system utilities in Python. 2. Share the Python interpreter and libraries. 3. Expose that Python interpreter as the *user's* default Python.
I think 1 *partially* mischaracterizes the problem, because any "system python" would logically be used by *every application written in python [or that embeds python] distributed by the OS's package management*, not just by "key operating system utilities". To suggest otherwise implies that they should not distribute any python applications at all. That also makes asking all of their package maintainers to change their #! line to point at a different interpreter [or to pass an option, as I had suggested in another post] a more significant ask than the "just change a few core utilities" that some people seem to be assuming it would be. It also means that making a "system python" does not remove the need to distribute the largish subset of python *libraries* that they distribute, because even when these libraries aren't used by key OS utilities, they are still used by packaged applications. [this, in turn, means we don't want the user's default python environment to stand entirely separate from the system python, or we'll start getting complaints along the lines of "I apt-get installed numpy, why can't I import it in my python interpreter?" - particularly from users who don't really care if it runs a couple versions behind]