It will happen eventually. The point of this bug is to determine what are the conditions on doing the transition.
AFAICT this is a matter of needing to support LTS releases and such. Some distros and their versions:
- Ubuntu Xenial, 3.5
- Ubuntu Trusty, 3.4.
- Debian Jessie 3.4
- Debian Stretch 3.5
- RHEL 6 ??? Does not ship Python 3 at all?
- RHEL 7 ???
- SLES 11 ???
- SLES 12 ???
I don't have a good grasp on what people actually need to support and for how long. Please write your requirements below so we can make an informed decision (as opposed to me saying "Debian Sid should be stable enough for everybody").
NOTE: the last version of meson that supported Python 3.4 was 0.44.1. You can install it from pip by using pip3 install --user meson==0.44.1
jpakkane
All 35 comments
Neither RHEL 6 or 7 come with Python 3, RHEL 7 users commonly can get it from EPEL which has 3.4 or they could use software collections which has up to 3.5.
TingPing
on 13 May 2017
RHEL 6 and 7 can use a Software Collection to get Python 3.3, Python 3.4 and Python 3.5.
QuLogic
on 13 May 2017
I would be happy moving to 3.6, because we will get type annotations, but F25 ships 3.5 (will be supported for ~10 months from now), EPEL7 ships 3.4 and you can get scl with 3.5,,
So I think 3.5 would be sanest option.
ignatenkobrain
on 13 May 2017
I guess the relevant question is who are the people who need to compile their projects with Meson versions newer than, say, what is in current Git trunk on platforms such as RHEL 7 _without_ having access to scl & co.
jpakkane
on 13 May 2017
Well, as it is, RHEL 7 is basically screwed on Meson, since they don't have Python 3 in the base. EPEL includes 3.4, but the EPEL Python 3 stack is designed to be able to easily rebootstrap to new Python version.
Fedora ships multiple versions of Python 3 in F24+ for tox, and if stdlib is all you use, then that should work across the board.
Conan-Kudo
on 13 May 2017
SLE 12 / openSUSE Leap 42.x ships Python 3.4 in the base.
SLE 11 probably doesn't ship Python 3 at all in the base.
However, OBS repos are available to offer versions of Python 3 to SLE 11 and SLE 12 / Leap 42.x, so that's not really an issue.
Conan-Kudo
on 13 May 2017
Raspbian (aka Raspberry Pi OS/PIXEL OS) only has Python 3.4 available. Raspbian is currently the most popular distribution for IoT projects as well as being many people's first experience of Linux based systems.
ZanderBrown
on 13 May 2017
That is a good point. The next Debian release is this summer (one hopes 😄). Are there estimates on how quickly Raspbian updates once the release is out?
jpakkane
on 13 May 2017
Not involved in Raspbian releases so @spl237, @XECDesign or @bennuttall would be better people to ask.
Remembering the Wheezy -> Jessie switch I would expect about ~ 4-month delay for new Raspbian but without the ability to upgrade an existing system I would imagine it taking significantly longer before most people are on the newer platform.
Some schools are still using Wheezy.
ZanderBrown
on 13 May 2017
It's a "when it's ready" kind of deal, but it shouldn't take anywhere near as long as the wheezy->jessie upgrade took. No promises about any dates though.
XECDesign
on 13 May 2017
Red Hat's recommendation to get 3.5 on RHEL 6/7 is to use RHSCL, and that's also available for CentOS via softwarecollections.org. Newer versions of gcc (et al) are also delivered that way, so it seems like a reasonable dependency for running newer versions of Meson.
ncoghlan
on 13 May 2017
@ncoghlan Except for... well, you know, the fact that no one in EPEL can use those as dependencies.
Conan-Kudo
on 13 May 2017
I think this can be summed up as:
Good idea but maybe wait for 18 months
ZanderBrown
on 13 May 2017
We should also list the benefits of moving to 3.5 and 3.6. I suspect that a move to 3.6 will be much more useful to us, so we might want to aim for that (even if it takes longer).
nirbheek
on 15 May 2017
@Conan-Kudo meson is not in EPEL (nor will be there)
ignatenkobrain
on 15 May 2017
Just to chime-in from a medium-sized distro:
Gentoo Linux has a continuous, rolling release model with effectively two branches (stable/testing).
We currently have Python 3.4 in our stable branch, and Python 3.5/3.6 in our testing branch. I am hoping to move our stable branch onto Python 3.5 soon, but we are not quite there yet.
floppym
on 15 May 2017
For mesa (and I assume Xorg as well, maybe @whot can chime in for them?) We need to build on whatever RHEL versions are getting updates from Red Hat, currently that's 6 and 7.
dcbaker
on 15 May 2017
Are you allowed to depend on anything outside the base packages? RHEL 7 does not ship Python 3 at all so will you need to support Autotools build on it until it goes EOL?
jpakkane
on 16 May 2017
xorg and mesa have the same build requirements, so assume they always come together. Software collections are meaningless for core packages, we can't rely on them during build so will likely have to support autotools for the time being.
That said, RHEL does add new packages over its lifetime, so there's a possibility that python3 may be added in a future version (or at least would be made available for builds) but it's unclear at this point. Very unlikely for RHEL6 given its age.
I'd still advise to be conservative unless there's a clear use-case for new features. Besides the type annotations in 3.6 I haven't seen any actual requirements, are these in some other bug?
whot
on 16 May 2017
Gathering up some facts thus far (not decisions).
- we can't go 3.5 until after stretch is out and preferably not until Raspbian is out as well
- Stretch is probably not going to get a backported 3.6 so we would make the life of package maintainers easier if we don't transition to 3.6 until Buster or very close to it
- RHEL 6 & 7 do not have Python 3 and probably won't get one either so any core package that wants to support it must maintain their current build system
Based on this it seems like we should stick to 3.4 for now and consider going to 3.5 at the earliest at the end of this year.
jpakkane
on 16 May 2017
In general, (new versions of) dependencies should not be introduced before the oldest still-supported Enterprise and LTS distributions have moved to that (versions of) dependencies. Otherwise it will be hard to serve new software to said Enterprise and LTS distributions.
probonopd
on 20 Jul 2017
amitdo
on 7 Jan 2018
Closing this since we are now at 3.5. Will open a new bug for 3.6.
jpakkane
on 7 Jan 2018
@jpakkane Don't forget to bump the README and associated docs for the upgraded Python requirement.
Conan-Kudo
on 7 Jan 2018
What does this mean for Ubuntu Trusty now?
It would be unfortunate if this still-supported LTS release would be cut off from builds.
probonopd
on 7 Jan 2018
@probonopd It was already cut off a while back since the version of ninja it has is too old.
Conan-Kudo
on 7 Jan 2018
Does this mean it's just _harder_ to build for Trusty using current meson or outright _impossible_?
probonopd
on 7 Jan 2018
If you can build your own version of Python that is new enough, that is sufficient.
jpakkane
on 7 Jan 2018
Using Debian 8.9 Jessie LTS. Unable to install or use current meson!
Output at pip install: python 3.5.0 required !
Tried to get and install python 3.5 at some standard user ways: but no success :-(
Get stuck with 3.4 !
Is there any way to install meson with python 3.4.2 ??
Help required.
csb0730
on 1 Oct 2018
Please seek help from your distribution.
floppym
on 1 Oct 2018
I see no chance to get it on that way.
Debian 8 (Jessie LTS) uses Python 3.4 and Debian 9 (Strech) uses Python 3.5.
As any effort possibly makes more work than a distro upgrade I think that's the way for me now.
But for the developers: I want to recommend for future meson versions please don't use newer Python versions if not really really required!
LTS versions of the big distro's should work out of the box (See comment from Jul 20, 2017 too). For example Debian 8 LTS is supported until 2020!
csb0730
on 8 Oct 2018
Meson is available in Debian backports. The current version there is 0.47.2.
jpakkane
on 15 Oct 2018
Thanks for this hint. I installed jessie-backports but unfortunately I
only found 0.21.0 meson version in the repos :-(
Will it come soon or are You only refering to strech backport?
Best Regards
Am 15.10.2018 um 00:53 schrieb Jussi Pakkanen:
Meson is available in Debian backports. The current version there is
0.47.2 https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/meson.—
You are receiving this because you commented.
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csb0730
on 15 Oct 2018
@csb0730 Please stop asking about this here. But for reference, @jpakkane was referring to Debian 9 backports (aka stretch-backports).
You should just upgrade your distribution if you need to build with projects that need a newer Meson.
Conan-Kudo
on 15 Oct 2018
The last version of meson that supported Python 3.4 was 0.44.1. You can always install that from pip. I have edited the topmost comment to say this. Hopefully no one else will reiterate the same questions again and again now. :smile:
nirbheek
on 15 Oct 2018
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Most helpful comment
In general, (new versions of) dependencies should not be introduced before the oldest still-supported Enterprise and LTS distributions have moved to that (versions of) dependencies. Otherwise it will be hard to serve new software to said Enterprise and LTS distributions.