Python 3 on Ubuntu

It is a release goal for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to have only Python 3 on the desktop CD images. Also, we won't be allowing Python 2 on the Ubuntu touch images.

We've had blueprints for several Ubuntu releases, the latest of which is a Trusty blueprint. There is a more detailed spec for this effort, an official transition tracker and a publicly shared Google docs spreadsheet to track this effort. This is an ambitious effort that will only succeed with help from the greater Ubuntu, Debian, and Python communities. In other words, we need you!

We'll track Ubuntu (and some Debian) related tasks here. This page used to contain a lot of good quick references for porting to Python 3, but that information has now moved to wiki.python.org.

Q/A

• Why not rely on 2to3? 2to3 is a pretty slow tool so it can impede on the speed with which you develop your code. It can however be used in non-overwrite mode to get a good sense of what needs to be changed in your source code. Generally, a single-source approach is the best for bilingual (i.e. Py2 and Py3) Python apps.