[webkit-dev] Moving to Python 3

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 1:04 PM Jonathan Bedard <jbedard at apple.com> wrote:

>
> > On Jul 12, 2019, at 12:49 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro at igalia.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 2:18 PM, Jonathan Bedard <jbedard at apple.com>
> wrote:
> >> The trouble I foresee us encountering with any scheme which attempts a
> conversion which retains both Python 2.7 and Python 3 compatibility is code
> like this:
> >
> > Is python2 support required for a well-motivated transitional purpose?
> >
> > I had previously proposed making all our scripts work with both python2
> and python3 only because I thought Apple was going to require python2
> indefinitely. Now that you're interested in this transition, there's
> probably no need to continue python2 support. Anyone building WebKit on
> older versions of macOS can reasonably be expected to manually install
> python3, right? And it's clear that you're prepared to do this for
> infrastructure/bots already.
>
> We still need to figure out whether (and for how long) we intend to retain
> Python 2 support. Over the last few months, opinions on this have changed
> quite a bit, so I’m trying to determine what our path forward is going to
> be.
>
> In my opinion, a few months after Catalina GMs, we no longer need to
> maintain Python 2 support, assuming that we provide adequate automation for
> installing Python 3 on pre-Catalina macOS (ie, Mojave, High Sierra) and are
> explicit about shebangs.
>

I don't think it's acceptable to require installation of Python 3 just to
build & run tests on WebKit unless the installation itself is automated and
compartmentalized to WebKit's development given how bad Python is with
respect to having multiple versions of Python's and managing packages
between them.

I frequently do WebKit development in older versions of macOS to diagnose
old OS specific regressions, and having to install Python 3 each time I
install an old OS is too much of a trouble.

- R. Niwa
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