Re:Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next RHEL ...
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @09:56AM
(#16811077)
Whenever this comes up I feel it is worth pointing out that Linux's "Things break" approach is a problem exclusive to the userland tooling built up around the kernel. Linus takes a very hardline stance against breaking kernel ABI compatibility (except for drivers), but pretty much every piece of software outside of that, including GLIBC, thinks it's totally ok to break things all the time.
It's really very sad that the Linux community never adopted Linus's view.
Re:Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next RHEL ...
by jhall1468 on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @11:14AM
(#16811921)
Because they are entirely different things. Breaking the kernel ABI doesn't just break a few packages for a popular language, it breaks the entire ecosystem. More importantly there's literally no reason to break compatibility in the kernel. There are perfectly valid reasons to break compatibility in programming languages.
Apples and oranges comparison.
Re:Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next RHEL ...
by jgalar on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @12:27PM
(#16812742)
Even the kernel occasionally breaks interfaces. Case in point, FUTEX_FD was introduced in 2.6.0 and retired in 2.6.26 [1].
I don't think anyone working on glibc is intent on breaking user space. Sometimes it's just the most pragmatic solution.
Re:Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next RHEL ...
by sp332 on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @10:28AM
(#16811387)
Yes and your Python 2.x code will still run after 2020. But going the other way - new programs might not run on older distro releases, which is what GP said.
Re:Python 2 will be replaced with Python 3 in the next RHEL ...
by gspetr on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @10:15AM
(#16811271)
We can trade anecdotes on which games age well on which OSes all day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_League
Released in 2004, you can't play on anything but Win XP because of Starforce DRM that didn't bother to patch for future compatibility.
In fact I can play EarthSiege 2, a game from the 3.11/Win95 era, just fine on Win7 x64 with the only things not working being joystick input (I guess it does some shenanigans with the MIDI/joystick port in addition to using the windows joystick API) and the pause screen which shows your vehicle spinning around spins too fast (probably because its speed is tethered to CPU sppeed).
Microsoft takes, with the exception of drivers, a lot of effort to keep backwards compatibility. And that is why people like it, in contrast to Linux where "Things break" is the norm and even in OS X it's not unheard of. Oh, and also why big enterprises stay as far away as humanly possible from anything NodeJS or more modern than PHP and Java.
Enterprises want and need stability first.