# Not much love for Python3 Ports?



## Atsuri (Aug 2, 2017)

I noticed that the Ports Collection and PKG binary repositories contain an abundance of libraries for Python2.7.x (denoted py27-* usually), however a lot less for Python 3.x.y. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 2 reasons for this trend:
1) Python 3 is a moving target and one would need to cover Python 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, etc.
2) Python 2.7.x is still fully supported so most Python projects can continue to rely on it.

That being said, I often have to use Python 2.7.x as either no libraries for Python 3.x are available from the Ports Collection (I'm talking about scientific computation modules like scipy, numpy, pandas, sklearn, etc. specifically) or they will not build for various reasons while installing through pip. 

As a FreeBSD user and Python developer I was wondering whether it would useful for the FreeBSD community to give some of the computational Python 3 ports some "love"? I would like to do it anyway, but I would feel the more motivated if some sort of general interest was out there .


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 2, 2017)

Did you ask on the mailing list? You'll get far more attention there than here cause that's where those folks hang out.


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## Atsuri (Aug 2, 2017)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Did you ask on the mailing list? You'll get far more attention there than here cause that's where those folks hang out.


Yes, shortly after opening this thread I wrote to the python@FreeBSD.org mailing list . Thank you for the suggestion!


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## tobik@ (Aug 2, 2017)

Atsuri said:


> As a FreeBSD user and Python developer I was wondering whether it would useful for the FreeBSD community to give some of the computational Python 3 ports some "love"?


Soon there will be FLAVORS support (see [1]) in the ports tree and there is a ban on adding new py3- slave ports because of it (see [2]), so please don't waste your time on this right now.


Atsuri said:


> Off the top of my head I can think of at least 2 reasons for this trend:


The real reason is that a port cannot currently create two (or more) different packages i.e. math/py-numpy will create a package for the default Python version (2.7 right now), so can only create py27-numpy.  With FLAVORS support this restriction is lifted and packages for both Python versions can be build from the same port.

[1] https://reviews.freebsd.org/D10327
[2] https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/sv...ct-filename.sh?view=markup&pathrev=446986#l19


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## Atsuri (Aug 2, 2017)

@tobik, thank you for your feedback! I will have a look at the provided links .


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