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by hobarrera 3421 days ago
The thing is, python guidelines (PEPs) stated that shebangs should specify python2 or python3 explicitly during the transition period. Using "#!/usr/bin/env python" for a project that was python2-only was not following guidelines, so the breakage was really the dev's fault.

Also, the python2 symlink should have already been there. Bad packaging on some distros resulted in bad practices packaging by some devs. Don't blame that on Arch.
1 comments
rlpb 3421 days ago
You're getting the ordering of events wrong. Arch's actions weren't in response to the PEP. The PEP was written in response to Arch's actions.

> Also, the python2 symlink should have already been there.

Nope. There was no such convention or specification at the time. There was, however, convention and specification (in the form of "what Python upstream build systems do") on what /usr/bin/python means, which is "Python 2".

link
hobarrera 3419 days ago
> There was no such convention or specification at the time.

There was no formal specification, but there was a convention that many distributions were already following (and quite a few others were not).

link