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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Chapter 1. On the move to Python 3</title><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.79.1" /><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="Debian Python Policy" /><link rel="up" href="index.html" title="Debian Python Policy" /><link rel="prev" href="index.html" title="Debian Python Policy" /><link rel="next" href="python.html" title="Chapter 2. Python Packaging" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Chapter 1. On the move to Python 3</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="index.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center"> </th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="python.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a id="python3"></a>Chapter 1. On the move to Python 3</h1></div></div></div><p>
Debian currently supports two Python stacks, one for Python 3
and one for Python 2. The long term goal for Debian is to
reduce this to one stack, dropping the Python 2 stack at some
time.
</p><p>
<a class="ulink" href="https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0404/" target="_blank">PEP 404</a> states that no more major Python 2 releases
are planned, although the latest released minor version 2.7
will see some extended support, documented in
<a class="ulink" href="https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0466/" target="_blank">PEP 466</a>.
</p><p>
Packages in Debian should use Python 3 if Python 3 is
supported. New packages should use Python 3 from the initial
upload, new upstream versions for existing packages should
use Python 3 if the new upstream version supports it.
</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol class="orderedlist" type="1"><li class="listitem"><p>
Programs should use Python 3, and should not be packaged
for Python 2 as well. Python 3 should be used for the
packaging if the packaging scripts use Python.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Python libraries, if they support Python 3, should be always
packaged for Python 3. If an application supports only Python
2, the Python libraries for that application should also be
packaged for Python 2.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Existing Python 2 libraries should not be dropped before
the last reverse dependency is removed.
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