Will Python 3.x ever become the actual standard?

[Terry Reedy]

On 10/24/2013 1:31 PM, Ned Batchelder wrote:
>
> On 10/24/13 9:29 AM, Damien Wyart wrote:
>>> I am starting to have doubts as to whether Python 3.x will ever be
>>> actually adopted by the Python community at large as their standard.
>>> Years have passed, and a LARGE number of Python programmers has not
>>> even bothered learning version 3.x. Why am I bothered by this? Because
>>> of lot of good libraries are still only for version 2.x, and there is
>>> no sign of their being updated for v3.x. I get the impression as if
>>> 3.x, despite being better and more advanced than 2.x from the
>>> technical point of view, is a bit of a letdown in terms of adoption.
>> Some Linux distributions will certainly switch to Python 3 by default,
>> sooner or later. Fedora has decided to do so for their 22 release:
>> http://lwn.net/Articles/571528/
>>
>
> I'm not sure what "by default" means, I hope it isn't that "python" runs
> Python 3.x.  That causes massive confusion on Arch, and will make it
> very difficult to support a mixed environment.

It means that 3.x is always present (with 2.x an option) and Fedora's 
Python code works with the always-present version.

The actual proposal (FEP? ;-):
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Python_3_as_Default
'''
The main goal is switching to Python 3 as a default, in which state:

     DNF is the default package manager instead of Yum, which only works 
with Python 2
     Python 3 is the only Python implementation in the minimal buildroot
     Python 3 is the only Python implementation on the LiveCD
     Anaconda and all of its dependencies run on Python 3
     cloud-init and all of its dependencies run on Python 3
'''
...
"Upstream recommends that /usr/bin/python point to Python 2 runtime for 
the time being, so if we go with that, there shouldn't be any serious 
compatibility impact: "

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy