Python 2.7 removal outline

[Chris]

There have been a great many comments on this matter on the
mailing list. All the replies are valuable. But (this) original
post has been trimmed in all those replies. So in an effort to
maintain context to the original statement. I'm making my reply
here. Which reflects the attitude of most all of the replies made
to this announcement. My comments below this initial announcement...

On 2021-03-24 06:03, Rene Ladan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> below is an outline continuing the Python 2.7 cleanup:
> 
> - all affected ports are now marked as deprecated, with an expiration date
>   of either 2020-12-31 or 2021-06-23.
> - we will have to wait for Chromium to fully switch to Python 3 before we
>   can fully remove Python 2.7. This is work in progress on their side. Not
>   waiting would imply removing www/chromium (obviously), editors/vscode
>   (it escaped the recursive-deprecation dance of devel/electron*), but most
>   importantly www/qt5-webengine which would drag half of KDE with it.
>   However, lang/python27 will be marked as RESTRICTED so that all ports
>   mentioned above can still be built and run, but Python 2.7 itself will
>   not be available as a package.
> - No more new ports having USES=python:2.7 or USES=python:2.7+ or existing
>   ports reverting to that, no excuses.
> - No usage of lang/tauthon by the framework or any port, no excuses.
> - lang/tauthon will be removed on 2021-06-23 as noticed in the port itself,
>   no excuses. Tauthon is not guaranteed to be compatible with any official
>   Python version so keeping it would just unnecessarily complicate things.
> - mail/mailman is being replaced by clusteradm@  with mlmmj. You can use
>   `pkg lock` to stick with it after removal, if there is no other way.
> - you are of course free to provide your own version of Python 2.7, Tauthon
>   and any application using those languages in your local setup, by using
>   overlays for example.
> 
> Miscellaneous tidbits:
> - WHY?!?!? Well, back in 2008, the Python Software Foundation planned to
>   mark Python 2.7 end-of-life at 2015-01-01, see [1], but that date was
>   pushed back to 2020-01-01 because a lot of downstream users had not
>   converted yet. So Python 2.7 is already end-of-life for 1.5 years, which
>   means that according to [1] the PSF is no longer fixing security issues
>   for it. As can be seen on [2], multiple vulnerabilities already have
>   been fixed for Python 3.6 to 3.9 this year.
> - On a related note, most software using Python 2.7 was already removed
>   from the Ports Tree last year, a lot of it being unmaintained or
>   more or less abandoned upstream.
> - Upstream Chromium is working on converting their codebase to Python 3 but
>   there is no completion date. Interestingly, adridg@ is experimenting with
>   converting www/qt5-webengine to Python 3 too.
> - We are indeed faster with dropping Python 2.7 than e.g. Ubuntu, however
>   more recent Debian/Ubuntu distributions are more and more dropping Python
>   2.7 too. This also has to do with how their branching model works, the
>   package set of Ubuntu LTS is determined a few months before the release
>   itself.
> 
> [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/
> [2] https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-392/
> 
> Ren,
> on behalf of portmgr

OK ports maintenance is almost exclusively on a volunteer/best
effort basis. Most Maintainers have a $DayJob. Some have $Family.
Some (not me) have something they call a $Life. Through all that,
they somehow manage to make time to adopt, and Maintain one or
more ports. Some -- perhaps many, do it because they're grateful
for FreeBSD and all the efforts made to create, and keep it a first
class OS. So in an effort to show their gratitude, attempt to
give-back by becoming a Maintainer. Some are programmers, some
are hackers, and some are just starting out. Often times for
seasoned Maintainers the task itself is relatively routine. But
Maintaining ports, even for seasoned Maintainers can be hard work.
If not because of the actual problem itself. To manage to find
the required time to get the job done in an acceptable time frame.
For the unseasoned Maintainer. The job can often be hard.
Why does our work have so little value that portmgr@ is unwilling
to keep us all in the loop, or consider our opinions on such matters?
Is it just me? Or is there a gross disconnect here?
Maintainers need a Forum where their views on ports matters get
some semblance of credence. Hell. I maintain some 160 ports. That's
got to be worth *something*.

Chris out...