[PATCHES] Port pytalloc to Python 3

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Fri, 2014-12-05 at 11:04 +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 12/05/2014 10:38 AM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > On Fri, 2014-12-05 at 10:08 +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> >> On 11/28/2014 07:36 PM, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 07:13:42PM +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> >>>> On 11/28/2014 06:29 PM, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> >>>>> Hi Petr,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 03:47:30PM +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> >>>>>> I've seen a discussion on this list from May 2013 [0] with some kind of
> >>>>>> consensus that porting Samba is inevitable, and would be hard, but there was
> >>>>>> no rush. Some posts there cite a wiki page [1] that used to warn against
> >>>>>> moving prematurely, but now it says:
> >>>>>>> Python 2.x is legacy, Python 3.x is the present and future of the language
> >>>>> Thanks for working on this!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think supporting Python2 and Python3 simultaneously makes sense at least for
> >>>>> our standalone libraries (talloc, ldb, tdb).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Maintaining support for two versions of Python at the same time
> >>>>> is painful and very costly. If we switch to Python3, we should drop
> >>>>> Python2 shortly afterwards if not at the same time.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> With my Debian/Ubuntu hat on, dropping Python2 support is fine. What do other
> >>>>> people think? Python3 was released in 2008, so surely it's made its way into
> >>>>> most distributions at this point..
> >>>>>
> >>>>> A migration would also need to be coordinated with OpenChange, who
> >>>>> have code that uses our Python bindings (all in Python2).
> >>>>
> >>>> -1
> >>>> There are more projects that use the bindings, and they will need time to be
> >>>> ported. Some have other dependencies that aren't there yet. I know FreeIPA
> >>>> uses the bindings, and porting that definitely won't happen overnight.
> >>> Which major projects are there, just beside OpenChange and FreeIPA?
> >>>
> >>> I do of course want to accomodate the projects that use our bindings, so let's
> >>> see if we can come up with a plan that is satisfactory for both of us. :)
> >>>
> >>> Is there any reason you couldn't just depend on a newer version of Samba once
> >>> you migrate FreeIPA to Python3? Why is it essential for you Samba support multiple
> >>> Python versions?
> >>
> >> Well, that would essentially force the FreeIPA team to maintain a fork
> >> of Samba until FreeIPA is ported. And porting FreeIPA's dependencies
> >> might take some time.
> >
> > Why not leave Samba until later then, if this is a concern?
> >
> > Andrew Bartlett
> 
> If you're asking why *I* don't hold off porting Samba, it's because 
> Samba it's a part of the Fedora Live DVD, and the goal is to remove 
> Python 2 from that completely. Porting FreeIPA can wait until later, 
> when we try to tackle the entire distro.

Thanks, that is helpful context.  It has been fun to see Samba become a
core and required project for Linux, but it has me curious:  What on the
live DVD is using our python bindings?

> Speaking from my other (and very separate) role, as a FreeIPA developer: 
> Python 3 is not a priority there, mainly because all the dependencies 
> are not ported yet. Any of the dependencies could ask the same question 
> – why not leave this one project until the end?

I realise it is difficult.  One of our challenges is that python was
added to samba at a time of much greater developer resources, so I'm
concerned about the impact of trying to dance both 2 and 3 here.

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba