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

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 03:37:16PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> 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 recall that at one time the openvz folks where packaging new QEMU on
RHEL-7 for a while after we had already dropped RHEL-7 as a target.
That's the trouble with enterprise distros, their usage sticks around
way longer than any of us would care to admit.

> I do think we have users who do ad-hoc from-source builds.

We'll certainly have contributors using it as a dev platform from
the corporate world.

With regards,
Daniel
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