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by jeroenhd 1263 days ago
If you just want to write a script, you likely know the version available on your system.

When in doubt, add the #!/bin/env python3.10 shebang to the top of your script to ensure the version it's running on is the same as the version you're writing the script for.

If I build an application on Linux I need to specify a glibc version or a PHP version or a Java version in some way as well. I don't see what this has to do with Python. Good luck running a jar built with JDK19 on JRE8, or an executable linked against glibc2.36 on Ubuntu 18, or a Python file written for Python 3.10 on a system that comes with Python 3.6.

Statically compiled languages come with their own problems (note that C++, Go and Rust also have system requirements, I've had to deal with a Go executable that would not work in a musl environment and a Rust executable that I needed to build on Ubuntu because the compiled version from my Manjaro laptop linked a against a libc version that was too recent).

If you need dependencies, specify and install them. If your only dependency is the interpreter, document it, specify it in the shebang, or deal with it. Python 3 is completely backwards compatible in my experience, it's only the programs that stuck with Python 2 for a decade that have trouble running on modern machines in my experience.
1 comments
bloblaw 1263 days ago
> Good luck running a jar built with JDK19 on JRE8, or an executable linked against glibc2.36 on Ubuntu 18, or a Python file written for Python 3.10 on a system that comes with Python 3.6.

Yes, you are starting to see the problem. This is why I recommend statically compiled binaries as a solution to this scenario, and do not recommend any of the above.

Here's a real scenario I've had in my career, when deploying a script to 350k systems. I know I have Python 3.x, but I cannot count on the fact that every (or most) clients will have even a functioning Python interpreter. So what's the solution? Ship a docker container to everyone? There are multiple ways to solve it, but I complied a statically linked binary instead of writing a Python script...and had no issues.

> If you need dependencies, specify and install them.

Here be dragons, and this is the entire reason I avoid Python when I need my code to 100% work on another machine I can't fully control. I choose statically compiled languages in these instances. In a server deployment...sure it's fine because I can control that.

> Python 3 is completely backwards compatible in my experience

I do not agree. If you write a script that uses any of the following features and try to run on $version -1 (or more), your script will fail.

  * 3.6, F-strings were introduced  
  * 3.7, Dataclasses and introduced 
  * 3.8, Walrus operator (:=) 
  * 3.9, merge (|) and update (|=) operators added to the built-in dict class
  * 3.10, structural pattern matching
  * 3.11, exception Groups and except*ΒΆ
All use of these will fail to function in a previous release.

Maybe you'll say to just install a new version of Python. All that is overhead and requires more management. Ok, that's fair.

The problem is when you want to run that script on a bastion host, or a prod server, 350k machines, or a server you don't have ability to download and install external binaries? (all of these are real scenario's I've experienced).

My experience has taught me that if I can't control the machine the script runs on, I save headaches by using statically compiled languages. As always, YMMV.

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wheelerof4te 1255 days ago
The only useful feature from that list are F-strings, which goes to show what joke of a language Python has become.
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