Re: Proposed Modules, My Take

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Thu, 2005-01-20 at 12:14 +0800, James Henstridge wrote:
> About the only time you'd use a versioned python executable name is if 
> your program actually depends on that version of Python.
> 
> This might be the case if your application includes a C extension, and 
> you want to make sure you invoke the version of Python that the 
> extension was compiled against (ie. you'd write out the #! line at 
> install time to match how the app was built).
> 
> If you don't have a dependency like this, using a versioned executable 
> name will just cause unnecessary incompatibilities.

On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 19:19 -0200, Johan Dahlin wrote: 
> Stick to #!/usr/bin/env python and in the very unlikely even that your 
> application break in (current_version+2, if you don't get any warnings, 
> it's guaranteed in current_version+1), fix the program, in the extremely 
> unlikely case that it's a non-backwards compatible change, check the 
> version in runtime.
> 
> If you're application gets popular, you'll most likely have people 
> testing it regulary with development versions of python and you'll even 
> find potential problems before new versions are released.

This surprises me. I hoped that we had a consensus on using specific versions 
of python:
http://www.daa.com.au/pipermail/pygtk/2004-September/008709.html

If Python will never again make incompatible changes then do ignore all of 
this, but I don't think that is true, or desirable.

I don't think it's acceptable for a (future) major part of the GNOME 
Platform to be this ABI unstable. Luckily, I hope the #! technique means it 
doesn't have to be.

I don't think it's acceptable for a GNOME application to stop working just 
because someone installed a new version of python that was needed by some 
other application. I don't think the user should have to experience that 
broken application and then go looking for a newer version of the GNOME 
application that has been adapted to the new version of python.

I don't think it's acceptable that the a package management 
system would refuse to install some other application just because GNOME 
needs an older version of Python.

What are the problems with using a specific version of python?

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com