Linux – Arch Linux: python and python2 are in conflict

arch linuxdependenciespacmanpython

I've recently installed Arch Linux onto my primary (Ubuntu) computer, and it is working really well for me. It's fast, configurable, basically a faster version of Ubuntu.

Since compiz-fusion isn't installed by default, I'd like to see how much it would impact my performance, but I get this really nice and descriptive error message when I run pacman to install it:

[root@arch /]# pacman -S compiz-fusion-gtk
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
:: python and python2 are in conflict (python<3). Remove python2? [y/N] n
error: unresolvable package conflicts detected
error: failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)
:: python and python2 are in conflict (python<3)

haven't installed python3, and my only installed Python version is Python 2.7.1, which doesn't seem to be conflicting with anything.

Google didn't turn up any results, so has anybody come across an error like this before? compiz-fusion isn't the only package which fails to install because of this python conflict, so quite a few nice packages (like python-qt) are uninstallable for me.

Any help is help for me. Thanks!

Best Answer

On Arch Linux, the python package contains python 3, and the python2 package contains python 2.

Try pacman -Sy python python2 first. Once both of those packages are installed, compiz-fusion and python-qt should install.

Oh, and you can't have updated your system in a while. dbus-python doesn't depend on the python package any more, but on the python2 package (since october 2010, according to SVN).

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