From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>
To: development@lists.ipfire.org
Subject: Dropping Python 2
Date: Wed, 05 May 2021 15:27:06 +0100
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Hello,

I would like to talk about what has been discussed at the last developer conf=
erence call this week: Dropping Python 2

This version of Python has reached its end of life and will no longer receive=
 any security fixes. Hence we need to get rid of it as soon as possible.

However, there is lots of software that still depends on it which has to be m=
igrated away first.

There are at least the following packages:

boost
fetchmail
fireinfo
iotop
ipaddr
libxml2
libxslt
newt
nmap
python
python-clientform
python-daemon
python-distutils
python-distutils-extra
python-docutils
python-feedparser
python-inotify
python-ipaddress
python-m2crypto
python-mechanize
python-optional-src
python-pyparsing
python-rssdler
python-setuptools
python-six
python-typing

We also have the following scripts:

config/ca-certificates/certdata2pem.py
config/unbound/unbound-dhcp-leases-bridge

Fireinfo is written by us and has a lot of C which will make it a little bit =
more difficult to migrate. We would also have to be very careful to not chang=
e any behaviour of the current implementation.

The rest is probably either software that is entirely written in Python 2 or =
software that brings bindings for Python. The latter case is easy because we =
can either force it to build with Python 3 or we just disable the bindings.

Ultimately we might need to keep Python around in the build system if there a=
re other packages that rely on it. However, it would be great if we were able=
 to remove it from the distribution very soon. Looking at his list, it does n=
ot seem to be too difficult.

Would anyone be up to help and remove Python from any of those packages above=
? I would like to aim for Core Update 158 and remove as much stuff as possibl=
e - if we can everything - and then remove Python 2 in the update after that.=
 If anyone has any custom scripts or applications, people will have some time=
 to migrate away.

Best,
-Michael

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