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Comment by fmoralesc | Hacker News Reader

> Apparently there is considerable annoyance at Arch's decision to install Python 3 as /usr/bin/python, against the recommendations of the Python community.

Really? Isn't Arch complaint with PEP 394 [1], which deals with that issue? The problems are mostly with people assuming `python` means `python2`, and distros/installs not providing the `python2` command.

[1]: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/

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> The problems are mostly with people assuming `python` means `python2`, and distros/installs not providing the `python2` command

Yes, Arch follows the recommendations of the link you provided. I was compiling a naïve program that assumed /usr/bin/python to be Python, so I was trying to hack autoconf (or cmake?) by overriding the hard-coded path with the python2 libdir.

I thought it would be nice to ask python2 itself for its library path so I asked #python. The channel moderator in turn appended "NO ARCH" to the channel banner once I mentioned Arch Linux.

Not nice at all, to say the least.

Quote your link:

>python should refer to the same target as python2 but may refer to python3 on some bleeding edge distributions

Is Arch considered bleeding edge?

I see Arch as a kindler, gentler gentoo. So maybe not bleeding edge, but definitely an edge. You should only be there if you know why you want to be there.

Do you have USE flags in the (mainly) binary distro you compare to Gentoo?

It's been years since I tried gentoo (and eventually decided it wasn't for me), so I had to look up USE flags. Great idea.

I've never run Arch, my impressions are from what I've read. Coincidentally it was the python3 thing that helped me decide not to use Arch.

Since I don't run arch (or gentoo) I don't speak with any authority. Searching around, I saw something about yaourt, which may or may not serve the same intention for the type of distro that arch is.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt

Dunno.

Sort of. The package building system is very simple and arch provides facilities for building everything from scratch if you want to.[1]

[1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Build_System

USE flags on Gentoo are a way to expose configuration options to the user, not just allowing packages to be built from source. More details: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=...

That's why I said "sort of". Arch (as far as I know) doesn't provide a global way to do what USE flags do in gentoo, but the same end can be acomplished by tweaking the packages . There are also ways to apply those changes automatically, but they are not the same thing either.[1]

[1]: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=10314

No, arch doesn't have anything remotely as use flags. But is 'gentoo-like' in that they serve upstream vanilla, without modifcations. I still prefer Gentoo's use flags and tolerating the suckage that sometimes ocurrs when an emerge fails.

Someone should make a way to sharing ebuilds with the same useflags and CFLAGS(or at least compatible CFLAGS) so users could opt-in and 'crowdsource' the binary generation, as I feel gentoo with binary packages would be the best distro ever (I am aware portage supports binary files, it is just prohibitevly expensive to support all configurations.

Gentoo doesn't have a fixation on vanilla packages. In fact it's quite common to see multiple patches going aside your average ebuild.

The combination of USE flags / CFLAGS / LDFLAGS that make sense for individual users is so high that maintaining binary repos doesn't seem feasible.

It's not bleeding edge, just up to date. There are testing and stable repositories, but the stable packages are supposed to provide stable software rather than a stable system as a whole. You, as the user, are responsible for the stable system.

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