"D'Arcy J.M. Cain" <darcy%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes: > On Thu, 24 Mar 2016 08:37:01 -0400 > Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote: >> Java and python I agree with you, but those are hardly paragons of >> compatibiltiy virtue. They are both examples of a language process >> where there is no language standard and the authors of the >> sole/dominant implementation think it's ok to change the language >> every major release, and users have to juggle which programs run on >> which versions. > > Not to start a language war but that is totally unfair about Python. > Python bends over backwards to be backward compatible with previous > versions. Even when they make a major change (e.g. 2.x => 3.x) they > allow for slow and careful upgrades. Version 2.7 is going to be > supported till at least 2020 and many changes in 3.x will work in 2.7. > If there is an incompatible change you can still run new code under 2.7 > by importing from the future. It's a really clean upgrade path. That's fair enough - but it leads to a requirement to have multiple versions installed in parallel and manage that. It's been troublesome because may others thing "#!/usr/bin/env python" is ok, and soundness in general requires binding to the actual version at configure time (because of not only language features but modules that are probed for that may or may be installed for different versions). So I'll agree that python is a pretty good example of a family of languages, which is different from a stable language. This is why I think it's a reasonable choice for pkglint (on those grounds).
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