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

[bob prohaska]

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 09:37:07AM -0400, George Mitchell wrote:
> On 5/16/21 10:19 PM, bob prohaska wrote:
> > [...]
> > I'd like to see the ports system keep working as it has in the past, but that seemingly
> > requires a kind of machine intelligence that hasn't evolved yet. Poudriere seems like
> > a brute force approach. [...]
> 
> You'll find quite a few remaining fans of portmaster.  Occasionally it
> puts you in dependency hell if you don't run "pkg check -ad" and "pkg
> check -aB" often enough, but I've given up on poudriere more than once.

8-)

Poudriere seems adapted to a closed-source system where the primary goal
is expedient production of binary-only software. It doesn't explicitly
close the source, but does discourage access.

I fiddled with portmaster some time ago while trying to compile www/chromium on
a Raspberry Pi3. It seemed more prone to getting stuck than a simple 
make -DBATCH
when all the dust settled. A large fraction of stoppages were related to
refusal to upgrade old ports that were already installed. Since portmaster
was advertised as a way to "upgrade" existing ports that was surprising.

The existing conflict between versions of python strikes me as more of a 
planning problem than a software bug. It may be naive, but I don't see
why python37 and python38 can't use distinct names for files placed in
system directories. It's rather more peculiar that deinstalling python37
does not solve the problem. Nor does deleting the offending file (link).  
Still, poudriere seems a huge hammer for a small tack.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska