Why do I have both /usr/lib/python3 and /usr/lib/python3.8?

[john steve]

On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 9:03:28 AM UTC-8, Chris Green wrote:
> Anssi Saari <a... at sci.fi> wrote: 
> > Chris Green <c... at isbd.net> writes: 
> > 
> > > Why are there both /usr/lib/python3 and /usr/lib/python3.8 on my 
> > > x[ubuntu] system? 
> > 
> > While it's more of an Ubuntu (or Debian) question better asked in some 
> > relevant Linux forum, in the end it's because some package managers 
> > decided to do that. You can use commands like these to see which 
> > packages put stuff in which directory: 
> > 
> > dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3.8 
> > dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3 
> > 
> > On my Debian system the corresponding output looks like this: 
> > 
> > $ dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3.7 
> > python3.7, libpython3.7-minimal:amd64, python3-tk:amd64, 
> > libpython3.7-dev:amd64, libpython3.7-stdlib:amd64, libpython3.7:amd64, 
> > python3-distutils, python3-lib2to3: /usr/lib/python3.7 
> > 
> > $ dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3 
> > python3-scipy, python3-opengl, python3-statsmodels, iotop, 
> > python3-reportlab-accel:amd64, python3-magic, python3-pkg-resources, 
> > python3-kiwisolver, python3.7, python3-pandas-lib, python3-kerberos, 
> > python3-lz4, python3-renderpm:amd64, python3-numexpr, 
> > python3-cffi-backend, python3-crypto, python3-tables, python3-rencode, 
> > python3-gi, python3-dbus, devscripts, python3-gpg, python3-pyasn1, 
> > python3-py, python3-eyed3, pdfarranger, python3-pip, python3-virtualenv, 
> > xpra, python3-pandas, python3-pil:amd64, python3-requests, 
> > python3-urllib3, python3-psutil, python3-paramiko, python3-netifaces, 
> > python3-patsy, python3-gssapi, python3-sklearn, python3-cycler, 
> > python3-sip, python3-cairo:amd64, python3-six, python3-chardet, 
> > python3-nose, python3-debian, python3-wheel, python3-attr, 
> > python3-soupsieve, python3-bcrypt, python3-bs4, python3-sklearn-lib, 
> > python3-scour, python3-setuptools, python3-entrypoints, 
> > python3-gi-cairo, python3-cups, python3-keyrings.alt, python3-pluggy, 
> > python3-tz, python3-ifaddr, python3-joblib, python3-cvxopt, 
> > python3-secretstorage, python3-reportlab, python3-more-itertools, 
> > python3-keyring, python3-asn1crypto, python3-html5lib, python3-dns, 
> > python3-decorator, python3-dateutil, meson, python3-pexpect, 
> > python3-idna, python3-seaborn, lsb-release, python3-numpy, 
> > python3-brotli, python3-tables-lib, python3-lxml:amd64, python3-pytest, 
> > python3-simplejson, python3-nacl, python3-zeroconf, python3-xdg, 
> > python3-libvoikko, python3-gst-1.0, python3-pypdf2, python3-evdev, 
> > python3-matplotlib, python3-statsmodels-lib, python3-cryptography, 
> > python3-certifi, python3-atomicwrites, python3-pyparsing, 
> > python3-ptyprocess, python3-webencodings, piper, python3-uno, 
> > python3-apt, python3-setproctitle:amd64, hplip: /usr/lib/python3 
> > 
> > So I'd say as a rule stuff relevant to the specific version of python 
> > goes in the specific version directory (i.e. /usr/lib/python3.8 in your 
> > case) and python software packages in general go in /usr/lib/python3. 
> >
> Yes, there are some oddities though, for example python3.7 seems to be 
> installed in both locations (python3.8 in my case). 
> 
> -- 
> Chris Green 
> ·
some tools require any of them.