[ros-users] [Discourse.ros.org] [General] Should we warn (new) users about difficulties with Python 3 and alternative Python interpreters?

[Maarten de Vries]

tl;dr: agreed, but it would be nice to have a python3 shadow repository earlier for testing, to prepare for the inevitable switch to python3.

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Another option would be to fix some of the underlying issues. I know that there are some challenges to support different python versions in the same binary repo. The alternative is to wait for a distro to switch to pyhton3 as the default and do the same for the ROS repository for that distro.

The only issue with waiting is that it doesn't really provide a testing period for python3. After all, there's only 2 to 3 more years of python2 maintenance [1][2]. It would be nice if people could test python3 earlier on Ubuntu (without building from source) so that potential issues will be found before a switch is pretty much forced.

A relatively simple option might be to have another shadow repository built with only python3. There would be no need to differentiate between python2/3 versions of packages then, because there is still only one version in each repository.

Either way, a warning for new users still makes sense (unless dual support in the same repo is provided, but that seems unrealistic). But if there is a semi-supported way for them to use python3, the warning could also point them in the direction of that repo (still with a big warning that it's experimental of course).

If they do use the python3 repo and still get into issues, it is likely a real issue that should be fixed rather than a problem with their environment.

[1] http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/
[2] http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0466/





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