[CentOS-devel] RHEL 8, and potentially CentOS 8, lack "/usr/bin/python"

Mon May 13 19:44:29 UTC 2019
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 02:07:42PM -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> This "rename packages as platform-package" name seems confusing and
> unnecessary. If that kind of reference to "platform" versions were
> needed, perhaps it should have been published as a metapackage, with
> "platform-python" empty except for "Includes: python3". As it is, it
> seems merely confusing and in conflict with 20 years of Red Hat
> package naming convention.

The idea is that you never use the platform-package python at all.
It's part of the OS, used for internal tools like dnf, and not in the
standard path.

This will stop people from trying to use pip to upgrade the python
modules used to run the package manager and break updates, for
example.

For packages any other package, you'd use the appstream pythons in
your dependencies.  Its best you just treat the internal python as a
black box and not something you actually package against.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>