[Python-Dev] Python Library Support in 3.x (Was: email package status in 3.X)

[Mark Lawrence]

On 19/06/2010 11:59, Arc Riley wrote:
> You mean Twisted support, because library support is at the point where
> there are fewer actively maintained packages not yet ported than those which
> are.  Of course if your Python experience is hyper-focused to one framework
> that isn't ported yet, it will certainly seem like a lot, and you guys who
> run #Python are clearly hyper-focused on Twisted.
>
> Great example of the current state: about an hour ago I needed an inotify
> Python package for a Py3 project.  I googled for "Python inotify", found
> pyinotify, saw that they have several recent releases but no mention of Py3,
> typed "sudo emerge -av pyinotify", and it installed pyinotify for Python
> 2.6, 3.1, and 3.2_pre at the same time.  Run python interactively, imports
> and works great.
>
> Portage (Gentoo's package system, emerge being the primary command) is
> Python based and fully ported to Python 3.  Most of my workstations and
> production servers report "/usr/bin/python --version" as "Python 3.1.2"
> (Python 2.6 is /usr/bin/python2), my Apache's mod_wsgi is compiled for
> Python 3 and save for a few Django and Trac sites (fastcgi) all of my
> Python-based webapps run on it. CherryPy and SQLAlchemy have had Py3 support
> for some time.
>
> I can name in a short list the legacy Python packages I use:
>
>     - Django
>     - Trac
>     - Mercurial (they have a Summer of Code student working to port it now)
>     - PIL (apparently will have a Python 3 release out soon)
>     - pygtk (Python 3 support planned for Gnome 3 in a few months)
>     - xmpppy
>
> The list of Python 3 packages I use regularly is at least 50 names long and
> I have only contributed to porting a dozen or so of those.
>
> This anti-Py3 rhetoric is damaging to the community and needs to stop.
> We're moving forward toward Python 3.2 and beyond, complaining about it only
> saps valuable developer time (including your own) from getting these
> libraries you need ported faster.
>

Fair comment, but how many people are waiting for numpy for Python 3? 
I'd guess that it's many, many thousands, given that there are people 
such as myself who use it indirectly, in my case via matplotlib.  Note 
that I am aware that the numpy Python 3 support is very close to release.

Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.