[lug] Running a mixed Python environment

[Jed S. Baer]

On Mon, 14 Sep 2020 19:51:57 -0400
Steve Litt wrote:


> What I've been doing is converting all Python that *I wrote*. It's
> consisted mainly of converting print commands to print functions, and
> was pretty easy.

I'm thinking of converting what I wrote to something less likely to need
later work. :) I used to write my little utilities in Bash and Perl. They
all still work without any further attention. I admit, finding an
alternative to Beautiful Soup that's as nice won't be easy.

> As far as code written by others that hasn't been upgraded to Python3,
> I consider such code unmaintained and seek alternatives. Py2 to Py3
> conversion is just too easy to be a problem for any reasonable code
> with a reasonably competent developer(s).

I don't believe there's any alternative to chirp, in Linux. The big player
in programming radios is RT Systems, and that's Windows only. The other two
which come to mind are fslint and Gnome Commander. The supposed alternative
to Gnome Commander is Tux Commander, but it's a pale imitation.

> > I don't have any trouble invoking these scripts under Python2, what I
> > need is to get the modules they use where they can find them.  
> 
> That's understandable, but the Python project sunsetted Python 2 on
> 1/1/2020. https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/ . What this means
> to you is that the longer you wait to pull off the bandaid, the more
> painful it will be. Every distribution will sooner or later stop
> supplying the deprecated and sunseted Python2x, so the sooner one
> switches, and finds alternatives for those projects refusing to switch,
> the less pain one will endure.

Yeah, well, it's already a pain. Fortunately, it's still possible to pull
the Python2 stuff down from older repos. And so far, there hasn't been any
conflict with anything, that I've found. I ended up running chirp in
flatpak, and installing what I needed for fslint.

The thing with sunsetting stuff like this is that the people who decide to
do the Guido aren't bearing the cost of converting. For some projects, the
maintainers might simply not have the time to do a conversion. Using 2to3
on the scripts I wrote didn't get me anywhere. Doing a conversion on a
large codebase could be quite a problem for a volunteer-maintained project.

I don't think it's fair to just label these projects "unmaintained". chirp
is certainly still maintained. I can't speak directly to fslint, but I
think there's still someone working on Gnome Commander.
-- 
All operating systems suck, but Linux just sucks less
 - Linus Torvalds