Python 37/38 conflict, was Re: Trubles compiling lxqt on RPi4

[bob prohaska]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 01:35:50PM -0700, Mark Millard wrote:
> You have apparently chosen to build/update ports via a
> technique that requires you to manage the dependencies, at
> least some of the time. (Not that when is necessarily
> obvious up front.)
> 

You give me too much credit 8-)

> Your environment is now based on a mix of python37 and
> python 38 related materials. You are likely going to
> need to rework/rebuild/reinstall things to avoid that.
> 
> Hints may come from that UPDATING that I quoted but
> things are more broken overall than what UPDATING is
> intended to cover. You might end up needing to
> uninstall a bunch of stuff until python is unused
> (or only one python is used) and then follow the
> notes if you have only python37 use and want to
> get to python38. Finally rebuild/reinstall what
> was uninstalled, based on python38 as a context.
> 
Trying to deinstall both python37 and python38 didn't
suffice. Python38's reinstall fails with the same
conflict. Deleting the offending file doesn't help 
If other things need to be deinstalled it's not clear
what they might be.
 
> Due to how I build/install ports, I've not had to deal
> with ending up with the mix so I'm not familiar with
> the details for recovering from a messy mix.
> 

Would use of poudriere help with this sort of problem?
It isn't trivial to configure, but this sort of difficulty
has been growing ever worse. I didn't want to deal with the 
complexity and overhead, but maybe it's time. 

Many thanks for patient counsel!

bob prohaska