Martijn Faassen: The Call of Python 2.8

Tue Apr 15 22:52:28 EDT 2014

On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:48:06 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote:

> On 4/15/2014 5:05 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:33 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>>> On 4/15/2014 2:08 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> The 'mistake' is your OS, whatever it is, not providing 3.3. It is
>>>>> already so old that it is off bugfix maintenance. Any decent system
>>>>> should have 3.4 available now.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think you mean “… should have Python 3.3 available now”, yes?
>>>
>>>
>>> ??? why would you think that??? My installed 3.4.0 for Windows is
>>> dated March 16.
>>
>> Debian's current stable (Wheezy) was released 2013/05/04, and the
>> latest version release of it (7.4) was 2014/02/08. Both those dates
>> precede 2014/03/16, so you don't get 3.4 in Wheezy. (Actually, you
>> don't even get 3.3, presumably because its launch date of 2012/09/29
>> missed the Wheezy feature freeze in mid-2012.) Debian Jessie (current
>> testing) ships 3.3 and 3.4, with the 'python3' package giving you 3.3.
> 
> There are three things a distribution can do with a new Python version:
> 1. Push it on people.
> 2. Allow people who need it to easily get it. 
> 3. Actively hide it and discourage its use.
> 
> I happen to think 2) is generally the right answer.

How would they do #3? Patch all the web browsers to fake a 404 Not Found 
when you go to the Python website and try to download it?

I'm actually asking a serious question. How does a distro "actively hide" 
something publicly available on the Internet? Note that, on Linux (when 
you talk about "distributions", you probably don't mean OS X or Windows) 
all the compiler tools needed to install from source are readily 
available, so anyone who wants to install a Python version not supported 
by their distro can do so. Many people don't wish to install anything 
outside of their distro's supported packages, but that's their choice, 
not the distro imposing anything on them.

-- 
Steven