12.10 has Python 3.2.3 default, does this impact existing python tools?

Ubuntu 12.10 has Python 3.2.3 default, so does this impact existing python tools, designed to be used with older python 2.x? There was a discussion in HackerNews on the same. I'm a bit apprehensive now to guide someone in python world moving to latest 12.10 for the reason it comes with Python3.2

I'm currently installing 12.10 from 12.04. Can I work side by side on Python versions 2.x and 3.x without breaking the system? Thanks.

Solution 1:

No, this does not impact existing Python2 tools.

12.10 has Python3 installed by default, but that doesn't mean it's the "default Python". Python2 is at this point also installed by default (AFAIK), and importantly, /usr/bin/python is still a symlink to python2.7.

The transition to Python3 has been done such that it has zero effect on existing Python2 applications. 2 and 3 are parallel installable, and install their site packages in different locations.

If you want your app to use Python3, you'll have explicitly change the shebang to:

#!/usr/bin/python3

See Python 3 on Ubuntu for more details.