Hi all,
Currently, in Fedora package names, "python" without a version number generally means Python 2. We would like to make it mean Python 3, but to make that switch, we first need to make sure nothing uses unqualified "python". All packages should use the "python2-" or "python3-" prefix. This has already been discussed in the packaging mailing list [0], which includes the technical details.
Recently, there were two important changes to Python packaging guidelines. The first one bans using the ambiguous `python` prefix in binary RPM package names [1]. Thus you must explicitly define the Python version by using either `python2-` or `python3-`. The second change bans depending on anything using the ambiguous `python-` prefixed names in (Build)Requires [2].
The packages that violate the above-mentioned policies are being tracked in portingdb [3] and we plan to start filling bugs soon. Since that's a lot of bugs to file (more than 1000), we encourage all maintainers to fix the packages they maintain. The changes needed to rename the packages are documented here [4]. For your convenience, we have also implemented taskotron automated checks, which run whenever a package is built in Koji. You can see the results in bodhi once you submit an update.
The templates we are going to use for bugs' desctiptions can be found here [5]. Any feedback or suggestions are welcome!
Kind regards,
Iryna Shcherbina
Associate Software Engineer
Red Hat