Python 2 fade-out

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Hi!

Python 2 support upstream was stopped in 2020[1], and most software
projects have used the time to switch to Python 3. Many upstreams have
stopped supporting Python 2 and in pkgsrc we held out longer than
most, leading to packaging old versions in parallel (which get no bug
fixes or security updates), and too much breakage happening again and
again because of incorrectly declared Python version support in
packages.

I don't think the additional effort spent on this is worth our time,
so long-term, I'd like to remove Python 2 from pkgsrc. There is no
definitive date for that.

As an intermediate step, I'd like to know what pkgsrc packages that
need Python 2 have an active user base, and remove the others or
remove their Python 2 support and limit them to Python 3 if they
support both. I think that most software using Python 2 is dead anyway
(otherwise it would have been ported to Python 3 in the meantime).

So, if you have python27 installed, please let me know what packages
you have installed that need it.

I'm aware of graphics/gimp (the GTK2 version) only having support for
Python 2 extensions. What else are you still using?

I'm also thinking of removing 27 from the default
PYTHON_VERSIONS_ACCEPTED (so that packages supporting Python 2 have to
actively declare that), but I don't know how much this would
break. Can someone please try this?

Thanks,
 Thomas


[1] https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/