Dropping Python2 (except buildtime)

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 8:10 PM Andrew Bartlett via samba-technical
<samba-technical at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>
> G'Day,
>
> Just a quick note to say that I have a merge request in to finally drop
> our python2 support, beyond the build process.  (We already stopped
> testing it a month or so ago).
>
> This also removes --extra-python and will make it easier for whatever
> changes need to be made for our python helper library names etc to be
> made, as we will then always be in py3 mode.
>
> If there is any reason this shouldn't go in please let me know soon, as
> I would like to push it soon after 4.10.0 is released as the tests.py
> changes keep needing rebase work.

One reason is RHEL 7. The .spec files of various RPM based systems
rely on a "%python_provides" macro, one which does not operate
properly even with the EPEL published python34 or python36 modules.
It's vaguely possible to manually replace those "%python_provides"
macros for RHEL 7 compilation.

I don't want to suggest that this discard of python 2 never be
completed. I'm merely saying that there is a price in that even I
would find it to be extra work to port 4.10 to RHEL 7 if this is
completed. And you did ask if there is *any* reason.