Re: [PATCH v2 0/7] Python: Drop support for Python 3.6

[Peter Maydell]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2023 at 09:56, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 17/02/2023 10.06, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> > Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> writes:
> ...
> > My view on all this is a bit more pragmatic.
> >
> > For a human developer, the difference between "dnf install
> > python-sphinx" and "pip install sphinx" is, in my opinion, close to
> > negligible.  Really no comparison to "git-clone GCC and bootstap it".
> > You seem to disagree with that.
>
> Honestly, being a Python ignorant, I completely messed up my system with
> "pip" already a couple of times, especially if the instructions forgot to
> tell me to use the "--user" switch. So yes, I tend to disagree ;-)

Seconded. I trust my distro package manager and I know how it works,
and I know how to uninstall a package later if I want to revert what
I've done. I do not know or trust what the heck pip is doing or where it's
trying to install anything, because it's not a tool I habitually
use. I can't remember if I've managed to mess up the system with it,
but I've definitely had the experience of "install stuff with pip,
do a distro upgrade later, the pip installed stuff is all busted".

> > For automated builds in general, and distro packaging in particular, the
> > difference is real, and could even be a show stopper.  But who's
> > packaging bleeding edge QEMU on CentOS 8?  I suspect the only automated
> > builds are our own CI, where the difference is real, but hardly a show
> > stopper.
>
> If we've got the feeling that nobody out there really builds QEMU on older
> long-term distros anymore, then why the heck are we still trying to support
> this according to our support statement?

I don't think anybody is *packaging* new QEMU on an old distro.
I do think we have users who do ad-hoc from-source builds.

thanks
-- PMM