Perhaps my biggest complaint is that until recently, Python-2.x releases were not packaged with an executable named "python2", thus during the transition to Python-3.x, there is no safe way to specify which major version your script requires in the shebang. Arch Linux is already using version 3 for /usr/bin/python so any third-party scripts that require version 2 are broken. Other distros may wait a few years to do this, but it will still be painful. It would be much nicer if script writers could update the shebang to use "python2" if that is what they need. (It is difficult to make the same code be valid in python3 and python2 if you have to support people on RHEL4 or RHEL5 (python 2.3 and 2.4 respectively), for example.)

This is a mistake on the part of Arch. The Python team intended that "python" would be the canonical name for the Python 2 binary, with "python3" used where Python 3 was intended.

Have you any citations to back up that statement?

It's been hashed out over years on the Python-dev list.

Please don't feed the trolls.

With what? Knowledge? Get over yourself.

Is this standard practice for language new version roll-outs?