Maybe it is time to move tools to Python 3.x?

Bohuslav Kabrda bkabrda at redhat.com
Fri Dec 5 08:08:53 UTC 2014


----- Original Message -----
> Hi,
> 
> On 12/04/2014 02:30 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 08:13:42PM +0100, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> >> When I worked at Canonical there was a goal to move both internal and
> >> public tools to Python 3.x version. IIRC started somewhere around 12.04
> >> and today when you look at Ubuntu Touch you will not find Python 2.7
> >> there. Similar with other tools.
> >> Can it be done? Maybe not in a month but who knows - f22 cycle?
> > 
> > Take a look at
> > <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Python_3_as_Default> for some
> > work in progress.
> > 
> Since Marcin specifically mentioned tooling -- is there a separate place
> where we can document the coding issues involved? e.g. best practices
> (should we use python-six as a compatibility layer? etc.)

AFAIK there's not a Fedora specific place for best practises around py3 porting. I myself consider these resources great:

https://docs.python.org/dev/howto/pyporting.html (upstream docs on porting Python code)
https://docs.python.org/3/howto/cporting.html (upstream docs on porting Python C extension)
http://python3porting.com/ (a great reference for both C and Python porting, including tons of examples)
http://www.wefearchange.org/2011/12/lessons-in-porting-to-python-3.html (a blogpost on how python-dbus was ported, lots of great gotchas there)
http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/7/2/the-updated-guide-to-unicode/ (interesting notes on work with unicode)

https://wiki.gnome.org/PyGObject/IntrospectionPorting (porting from PyGTK to PyGObject Introspection)
http://overtag.dk/wordpress/2013/01/first-impressions-of-gtk3-migration-in-python/ (same as above)

>From the tools/libraries that can be used:
- https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/2to3.html (package python3-tools) is a tool that you run on your code in order to *move* it to Python 3 (e.g. doesn't guarantee backwards compat)
- http://python-modernize.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ (package python-modernize) - like 2to3, but tries to maintain backwards compat with Python 2.6+
- https://pythonhosted.org/six/ (package python{,3}-six) - importable library that helps write code compatible with both Python 2 and 3

And you can also have a look at my presentation from this year's Flock, it speaks about basic differences, porting and how people can help with porting:
https://bkabrda.fedorapeople.org/py3-as-default.pdf

Hope this helps!

> Best regards,
> 
> --
> Michel Alexandre Salim
> Fedora Project Contributor: http://fedoraproject.org/
> 
> Email:  salimma at fedoraproject.org  | GPG key ID: A36A937A
> IDs:    keybase.io/michel-slm      | IRC: michel_slm at irc.freenode.net
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-- 
Regards,
Slavek Kabrda


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