python version

Is there any reason we are using Python 3.7 over Python 3.6? My linux Mint 19 is a little outdated I know. Currently there is only 3.6 I believe for it and not a 3.7 causing me to edit configure.ac and change the version to 3.6 from 3.7. Everything seems to work well with this version of python.

3.7 is being used because that is the version that Debian Buster uses. Buster is the distro that LinuxCNC builds with and also the version on the official LinuxCNC ISO.
There is some work being done to allow different python versions.

crowloy wrote:

Is there any reason we are using Python 3.7 over Python 3.6? My linux Mint 19 is a little outdated I know. Currently there is only 3.6 I believe for it and not a 3.7 causing me to edit configure.ac and change the version to 3.6 from 3.7. Everything seems to work well with this version of python.

Yes I gave up Mint becasue its so far behind in kernel versions etc. I am running Debian Bullseye which is Python 3.9.

It has the preempt_Rt kernel in its repositories so its pretty easy to get going but you need to build a RIP version.

Don't use Bullseye or equivalent yet if you want Buildbot packages. Wait until the python versioning is finished. Buster and its equivalents have the preempt_rt kernel as well.

crowloy wrote:

Is there any reason we are using Python 3.7 over Python 3.6? My linux Mint 19 is a little outdated I know. Currently there is only 3.6 I believe for it and not a 3.7 causing me to edit configure.ac and change the version to 3.6 from 3.7. Everything seems to work well with this version of python.
 

Just what the devs working on the python3 updates targeted because they target Debian.
Mint 19 can be made to work but the libraries are getting pretty old. It depends also on what screen you are using.

cmorley wrote:

Mint 19 can be made to work but the libraries are getting pretty old. It depends also on what screen you are using.

The inability to get Python 3 running happily on Mint was the reason why I went to Bullseye. I don't mind compiling Linuxcnc.

rodw wrote:

The inability to get Python 3 running happily on Mint was the reason why I went to Bullseye. I don't mind compiling Linuxcnc.

That doesn't make sense, I had no issues building LinuxCNC on Mint with python3.
Buildbot packages was a different story because the Mint python3 versions were different to the python3 version that Buildbot builds with.

Yeh, but I was on Mint 17.3 (shows how long ago I set up my machine which has only ever run master back when 2.8 was master). Back then you had to compile the kernel to get PREMPT_RT.

Eventually, Master dependencies could not be satisfied so it forced my hand. I played with MXlinux but it would not support my networking hardware reliably. So then I went back to Mint 19.3 because V20 had not worked before.  The Python version rolled forward to 3.7 and Mint 19.3 was only on 3.6 so my config broke when Pulled an update. I could not get the python versions working together (right when the python3 transition happened). So then I decided to give Bullseye a try as it did not include Python 2.7. I set it up on another machine initially, then spent a lot of time setting the environment up on my production machine so I could mange it remotely and I decided to build and install the debs. I had never ever done that before! That was a mistake! Seems like when you do that, you can never run RIP again!

In  all honesty, the change to Python 3 and the need to run master branch to get QTplasmac has created a minefield in my view. Everything is very unstable.  I tried to revert to my gmoccappy config. Gmocappy runs on Python 3 these days, but plasmac insisted it needed to be upgraded to qtplasmac. I don't understand why. 

Bullseye is a good option if you want to totally remove Python 2.7 and don't mind compiling Linuxcnc. But Debian requires a lot of little things to be done that  other distros don't eg Auto logon, sudoers group and manual network setup

MX has the same drivers as the equivalent Debian version, MX19 = Buster and MX21 = Bullseye.

I have a package install plus several rip installs on a single machine without issue, of course only one can run at a time.

PlasmaC wants to migrate to QtPlasmaC on master branch because no work was done on PlasmaC to convert it to python3.