`port select python` and qtwebengine

[Christopher Jones]

Hi,

>> However, the person who reported the error to me claimed he only used `port select` and didn't create the symlink himself. I didn't push him to know how nor did I try myself, but if indeed `port select` allows this calling it a "user error" is a bit unjust. You cannot expect every user to know that plain `python` should resolve to a v2 interpreter (I also didn't), and `port select` shouldn't be able to break that rule.
> 
> From my point of view, yes, MacPorts allows the user to commit this error, and we should fix MacPorts to prevent such an error, or at least warn the user about it, hence the ticket whose URL I mentioned earlier.

Please note, the comment in that ticket referring to the PEP is 3 years old, and the PEP itself was last modified in 2015.

The PEP itself notes that 

"It is anticipated that there will eventually come a time where the third party ecosystem surrounding Python 3 is sufficiently mature for this recommendation to be updated to suggest that the python symlink refer to python3 rather than python2.”

I am not saying day that is now, but given python 2.7 is EOL next year (last time I checked) I think it is at this point less of an error for a user to have ‘python’ point to ‘python3’ than it was when that ticket was opened.

For me, we should allow ‘port select python’ to select a 3.x version, but at the moment issue a warning to the user if they do this they might have problems.

Also none of what a user might or might not do with port select should have any bearing on how any given port works. If it does, it is a bug in that port. ports should be written to, if they are sensitive to the python version used, explicitly configure their builds to use a specific macports python version, and not rely on whatever the environment provides.

Chris
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