[U-Boot] [PATCH] binman: Explicitly request python2 instead of python from env

[Simon Glass]

Hi,

On 27 February 2017 at 09:26, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 10:25:38AM -0500, Tom Rini wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 12:25:48AM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>> > On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 07:41:34PM +0100, Paul Kocialkowski wrote:
>> > > We now live in a world where python cannot be assumed to be python2.
>> > > As a matter of fact, it is no longer the default for python on many
>> > > GNU/Linux distributions.
>> > >
>> > > Running binman with python3 fails, so explicitly request python2 from
>> > > env in the shebang for running it.
>> >
>> > On other systems such as OpenBSD the binary is python2.7 not python2
>> > or python.  Though there isn't really a way to handle this with
>> > how u-boot builds as I understand it (besides local patches).
>>
>> I thought, but could be wrong, that "python2" was the canonical way name
>> for the python 2.x binary.
>
> So, I looked harder at this and found
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/ which in sum, to me says it is
> more reasonable to expect 'python2' to exist than it is to expect that
> 'python2.7' exists (but is also possibly getting out of date as it
> sounds like more than just Arch sets python to python3).
>
> That said, I also found issues that note that OSX (and as you note,
> OpenBSD) do not do python2 but rather python2.7 and that the "best"
> overall solution is to make the code compatible with python 2 and
> python 3 so that 'python' is still the correct thing to look for.
>
> My inclination for this release is to keep the current behavior and hope
> that for the next release someone has the time to make binman python2
> and python3 compatible.  We do this today with 'patman' but that tool is
> more optional than binman is and we certainly have the case today where
> patman will fail if the user doesn't have the "future" package installed
> in python.  I almost wonder if making binman python3-only would be
> easier.

I agree. I will make the time for this in a few weeks ,if someone
doesn't kindly beat me to it. It should be possible to support both
Python 2 and 3.

Regarding the incompatibility of Python 2 and 3, I would like to add
my approbation to the pile also.

Regards,
Simon