On 11/12/25 17:39, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
On 2025-11-12 10:49:08 -0500 (-0500), Antoine Beaupré wrote:
[...]
I've been wondering whether it's time we finally make this change.
Concretely, I think it means:
1. deprecating /usr/bin/python3
2. shipping Python 3 as /usr/bin/python directly
I think we should do this for Debian 14 (forky), and stop shipping
python3 altogether in Debian 15 (?).
[...]
I can understand the need for #2, but I don't see why you'd ever do #1.
For that matter, the python3 link is still included by upstream Cpython
when doing a `make install` or in a stdlib-created venv. Lots of user-
written scripts use python3 in their shebangs. It's not harming anything
simply by existing, so why deprecate something that can't/shouldn't be
removed?
I also don't see the need for #1, but how much of a problem is #1? Or,
as mentioned on irc, is that an ansible only issue?
Please note, that we still have the python-is-python3 package, which
currently is ok to use, the package description says:
No packages may declare dependencies on this package.
So you can use it in autopkg test triggers and build dependencies.
Shipping the /usr/bin/python symlink in an existing package will make it
much more difficult to get rid off it later again.
Matthias
