Updated Python Eclasses and Autogen

[drobbins]

Hi All,

To get ready for future improvements to Funtoo, I am adopting a multi-phased approach to 'fix Python'. First step is to address some issues that exist in the Gentoo python eclasses. I've updated these eclasses to be at least somewhat better than they are in Gentoo. These changes will be hitting the tree in an hour or so. For new ebuilds, you can now use the following rather than enumerating every single version of Python:

PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3+ )

Because the minimum version of python3 we support is 3.7, this will ensure that the ebuild will be marked compatible with 3.7 and later versions of Python. Using the '+' symbol is the preferred way to mark ebuilds using PYTHON_COMPAT because it eliminates the time-consuming process used in Gentoo of tagging every single python-using ebuild when a new version of Python comes out. I don't know how they deal with this but it is a lot of wasted energy.

Also supported in the new eclasses are the following:

PYTHON_COMPAT=( python2+ ) # python2_7, python3_7, and beyond
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_7+ ) # same as python3+ since we start counting at 3_7
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_8+ ) # should be self-explanatory... 
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_9+ )

Note that pypy and pypy3 still need to be manually specified, and it is fine to combine as in the usual way:

PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3+ pypy3 )

And another important change I made to the eclass is that any ebuilds still referencing python3_5 or python3_6 will be 'auto-upgraded' to python3_7 compatibility with no user intervention. So this could close a whole slew of bugs. I'm also enabling eclass support for the upcoming Python 3.9.

IMPORTANT FOR ALL USERS: These changes will result in all of your Python-based and Python-using packages being rebuilt. This rebuild is for cosmetic purposes only -- it's due to a weirdness in emerge and the eclasses -- and really is optional and doesn't actually result in any changes except changes to the /var/db/pkg database USE flags. Therefore, these rebuilds can be completed at your convenience as they are not important. More adventurous users may look for ways to write a script to update /var/db/pkg so that these rebuilds are unnecessary -- if you attempt this, please back up /var/db/pkg first and read the following technical note!

TECHNICAL NOTE: Due to how Gentoo implemented the python eclasses, our deprecation of python3_5 and python3_6 in PYTHON_TARGETS will result in some ebuilds going from 'PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET' mode to just regular 'PYTHON_TARGET' mode. What you will see is that some ebuilds will be turning off python_single_target_python3_7. This is OK. This is just how the eclasses were written by Gentoo -- PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET is only enabled when there is more than one active implementation of Python in PYTHON_COMPAT. Otherwise it just falls back to using PYTHON_TARGETS.

On another note, our continued use of auto-generation continues to go well with many more packages now in the tree that are auto-generated. Expect this direction to continue.

Best,

Daniel