Python 3.6 (only) for 4.10? (was: Re: Samba 4.9rc1 and blocker bugs)

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Tue, 2018-07-03 at 16:35 +0200, Andreas Schneider via samba-
technical wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Samba 4.9rc1 will be released while I'm on vacation. I didn't find a release 
> bug for Samba 4.9 but there is a blocker which I opened:
> 
> Support building Samba with Python3
> https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13504
> 
> Alexander is working on it to get it ready in time and he just has a few 
> things failing. Thanks for your hard work on that Alexander. There is a 
> mailinglist threads which he updates with his progress.

I agree this is important, but we agreed as a team that we do not have
'blocker bugs'.   (That is also why there is no release bug).

I'm not hopeful that the many remaining issues around Samba's Python3
support can be addressed in the next few weeks.  Joe already found more
issues in Noel's recent patch set (but got dragged onto customer work),
and that is still just a WIP.  

Fundamental issues around LDB bytes and string handling and the
behaviour of str() in practice remain to be sorted out.

As I say on the bug, the best 4.9 can hope for is that the --without-
python build builds with python3. 

Finally, I think we do better to align for Samba 4.10.  Hopefully we
will have a RHEL8 by then, with Python 3.6+ on the system.  

While the build can naturally continue to operate with whatever waf
2.0.8 is compatible with, I hope we can then set Python 3.6 as the
minimum Python version for runtime use.  (Backports of Samba using
Python will need to link to a backported Python3).

That in turn would allow us for 4.10, if we actually finish, to support
just one, modern Python at runtime (specifically in the AD DC also the
testsuite), which would help many, many things.

Thanks,

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