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pythonmigrationpython-3.x
Fabian Fagerholm
Fabian Fagerholm

Reputation: 4139

Tracking global migration to Python 3.x

Python 3.x is looking ever more tempting with cleaned up syntax (I like it, others may not) new features and what looks like a gradual progression towards more speed and better multithreading.

But Python 3.x is still held back by lack of 3rd party support. Important packages like Django, Twisted, etc. are not ported. It's hard to get an overview of where the bottlebecks in the migration are, how far it has come, and if it's progressing at all. The migration dependencies are also hard to map. Also, projects are probably waiting for Python 3.x to offer some major improvement over 2.x that would justify the effort of porting.

Ideally, there would be a site for tracking this migration overall, with (links to) migration plans and dependencies shown so that people willing to help the migration globally could coordinate their efforts and help specific projects. Perhaps also linking to projects' bug tracking systems for relevant migration-related bugs.

But perhaps I'm just not looking hard enough. Does someone know of any efforts to track global migration to Python 3.x?

(By "global", I mean the universe of open source projects built on Python.)

Update: There's a poll right now on the Python home page which asks about packages you'd like to see ported to Python 3.x.

Upvotes: 8

Views: 882

Answers (2)

Lennart Regebro
Lennart Regebro

Reputation: 172319

George Brandl has made a script that generates a graph with the amount of packages supporting Python 3:

Python 3 packages over time

The Link on the CheeseShop front page shows the packages in question: http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3aaction=browse&c=533&show=all

There is also (a pretty crummy) list of unported packages ordered by how many depends on it: http://onpython3yet.com/ Why do I say it's crummy? Well, because it is done entirely without manual fixing up, resulting in things like listing Python as a package. This is to a large extent because people don't know that the "Dependencies" listing isn't a place to just list any sort of random dependencies, it should be used to list the packages that should be auto installed when you use easy_install/PIP. But for example in the Django world, they don't know that so you see things like "django-saddle" depending on Django and Python, and hence not being easy_installable.

That said, the list is interesting, and we see that PIL really should get ported.

Now this is not anything "global" it's just the packages on PyPI, and as such tend to be mostly Python modules, not separate applications. But I think the trend in general is visible there anyway.

Upvotes: 9

Craig McQueen
Craig McQueen

Reputation: 43456

The Python Package Index (PyPI) allows you to search for Python 3rd-party modules that support Python 3.x. It even has a Python 3 packages link which lists them all.

But that doesn't track individual projects' progress on Python 3 support. It just tells you which projects have achieved it.

Something I'd be interested to see is a graph of the total number/percentage of Python 3 packages in PyPI over time (from Python 3 release until present). I don't know if anyone has tracked this, or if the PyPI administrators have enough history data to produce such graphs.

Upvotes: 2

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