[Python-Dev] Promoting Python 3 [was: PyPy 1.7 - widening the sweet spot]

[Ned Deily]

In article <87fwhfqywr.fsf at uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>,
 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> I haven't had the nerve to do this on MacPorts because "port" is such
> a flaky thing (not so much port itself, but so many ports assume that
> the port maintainer's local configuration is what others' systems use,
> so I stay as vanilla as possible -- I rather doubt that many ports are
> ready for Python 3, and I'm not willing to be a guinea pig).

I think your fears are unfounded.  MacPort's individual port files are 
supposed to be totally independent of the setting of 'port select'.  In 
other words, there are separate ports for each Python version, i.e. 
py24-distribute, py25-distribute, py26-distribute, py27-distribute, 
py31-distribute, and py32-distribute.  Or, for ports that are not 
principally Python packages, there may be port variants, i.e. +python27, 
+python32, etc. If you do find a port that somewhere uses an unversioned 
'python', you should report it as a bug; they will fix that.  Also, 
fairly recently, the MacPorts introduced a python ports group 
infrastructure behind the scenes that makes it possible for them to 
maintain one meta portfile that will generate ports for each of the 
supported Python versions also supported by the package.  The project 
has been busily converting Python package port files over to this new 
system and, thus, increasing the number of ports available for Python 
3.2.  Currently, I count 30 'py32' ports and '38 'py31' ports compared 
to 468 'py26' and 293 'py27' ports so, yes, there is still a lot to be 
done. But my observation of the MacPorts project is that they respond 
well to requests. If people request existing packages be made available 
for py32, or - even better - provide patches to do so, it will happen.  
Also right now besides the Python port group transition, the project has 
been swamped with issues arising from the Xcode 4 introduction for Lion, 
mandating the transition from gcc to clang or llvm-gcc.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org