linux - How to update-alternatives to Python 3 without breaking apt?

Question

The other day I decided that I wanted the command python to default to firing up python3 instead of python2.

So I did this:

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.7 2

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.5 3

$ sudo update-alternatives --config python

$ sudo update-alternatives --config python
There are 2 choices for the alternative python (providing /usr/bin/python).

  Selection    Path                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/python3.5   3         auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/python2.7   2         manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/python3.5   3         manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 0

And that all worked. Great! :)

$ python -V
Python 3.5.2

But it wasn't long before I realised I had broken apt/aptitude when it comes to installing and removing python packages because apt was expecting python2 it transpired.

This is what happened.

$ sudo apt remove  python-samba
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  samba-libs
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  python-samba
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 5,790 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
(Reading database ... 187285 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python-samba (2:4.3.11+dfsg-0ubuntu0.16.04.5) ...
  File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 63
    except (IOError, OSError), e:
                             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
dpkg: error processing package python-samba (--remove):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 35, in <module>
    from debpython.version import SUPPORTED, debsorted, vrepr, 
  File "/usr/share/python/debpython/version.py", line 24, in <module>
    from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
ImportError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 python-samba
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Eventually I guessed it wanted python2 as the default, so I undid my changes as follows:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config python
There are 2 choices for the alternative python (providing /usr/bin/python).

  Selection    Path                Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/python3.5   3         auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/python2.7   2         manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/python3.5   3         manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1

$ python -V
Python 2.7.12

And then apt worked again

$ sudo apt remove  python-samba
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  samba-libs
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  python-samba
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 5,790 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
(Reading database ... 187285 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python-samba (2:4.3.11+dfsg-0ubuntu0.16.04.5) ...

So I have had to leave it as defaulting to python 2 but I develop in python 3 and so would like my system to default to python 3 for when I run python and idle.

Can anyone tell me how I can achieve this without breaking apt?

My system is a Raspberry Pi 3B running Ubuntu:

Linux mymachine 4.4.38-v7+ #938 SMP Thu Dec 15 15:22:21 GMT 2016 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

(It's actually an arm v8)

$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS"

Answer 1

Per Debian policy, python refers to Python 2 and python3 refers to Python 3. Don't try to change this system-wide or you are in for the sort of trouble you already discovered.

Virtual environments allow you to run an isolated Python installation with whatever version of Python and whatever libraries you need without messing with the system Python install.

With recent Python 3, venv is part of the standard library; with older versions, you might need to install python3-venv or a similar package.

$HOME~$ python --version
Python 2.7.11

$HOME~$ python3 -m venv myenv
... stuff happens ...

$HOME~$ . ./myenv/bin/activate

(myenv) $HOME~$ type python   # "type" is preferred over which; see POSIX
python is /home/you/myenv/bin/python

(myenv) $HOME~$ python --version
Python 3.5.1

A common practice is to have a separate environment for each project you work on, anyway; but if you want this to look like it's effectively system-wide for your own login, you could add the activation stanza to your .profile or similar.