On 01/07/2018 08:53 PM, Gary E. Miller via devel wrote: > On Sun, 7 Jan 2018 18:02:32 -0600 > Richard Laager via devel <devel@ntpsec.org> wrote: > >> Debian has two versions of Python. Debian's Python 3.x executable name >> is python3, so `/usr/bin/env python` gets me Python 2.x. I think this >> is a great example of this question. > > Just two python's?
Yes, just two. There is one system-wide version of Python 2 and one system-wide version of Python 3. I assume the the long transition is the only reason it even has both. If software had been generally ready, they likely would have transitioned from 2 to 3 directly. In the case of something like PHP, there is only one system-wide version, even across the 5.x -> 7.0 boundary. I did some light looking at eselect, and it seems it uses various mechanisms under the hood to implement the selection, depending on the situation. I asked about symlinks because Debian has an "alternatives" system which is used for a somewhat different purpose. It manages symlinks for multiple independent implementations providing the same functionality. For example, it manages whether /usr/bin/awk is provided by gawk or mawk. It is also system-wide. -- Richard
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