python-2.7 reached end of life and is not supported anymore. Currently supported branches: https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches
Distributions (including Gentoo) are moving away from python:2.7-only packages. Would it be worthwile porting python plugin support in golly to python3? Or manye remove python support completely?
Thank you!
It's definitely worthwhile to make the move to Python 3 at some point. There's a large existing codebase of Python 2 scripts in common use, so it doesn't make much sense to remove Python support completely. For the most part existing scripts will work in Python 3 with only very minimal changes needed, if any at all -- there aren't any print statements in most Golly scripts, converting 'xrange' to 'range' is trivial, etc.
The main issue is that Python 2 is still perfectly functional just at the moment, and no one has stepped up yet to tackle the tricky cross-platform update process.
However, a partially successful experimental effort is documented here on the conwaylife.com forums.
Last edit: Dave Greene 2020-06-30