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Maybe this is the wrong forum for this question, in which case I apologise, but why isn't Python 3.6 in the official repositories for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS? According to this answer it seems like Python 3.6 is in the repos for 16.10 and onward, although it's buggy.

Is it because it's buggy and 16.04 is supposed to be stable because it's an LTS? Tutorials online (specifically this one for getting started with Python on Heroku) says you need Python 3.6. Will Python 3.6 become available via official repos for 16.04 once bugs are resolved? How does this work? It's been quite a few months since the above question and answer and it's still not available in the official repos. I would think that Python updates would be important enough to get added to the official repos rather quickly?

Edit

After reading the answers to "Why don't the Ubuntu repositories have the latest versions of software?" most of my questions have been answered but I still don't feel certain regarding:

  • Will Python 3.6 become available in the official 16.04 LTS repos?

  • If it will become available once bugs have been worked out, how long can one expect that to take?

According to the referenced question, packages are frozen and only bug fixes and security issues results in updates. Does that mean that Python 3.6 will never become available for Ubuntu 16.04 since it's frozen at 3.5?

This doesn't seem reasonable to me as 16.04 is an LTS. It can't be that users are expected to you use old - 2016 - versions of compilers and interpreters for an LTS, can it?

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  • "It can't be that users are expected to you use old - 2016 - versions of compilers and interpreters for an LTS, can it?" Yes, they are. And some users are willing to pay good money for that.
    – muru
    Jun 17, 2017 at 18:58
  • While not directly answering your question (as the other answer says, you cannot install it from official lts repo), I can suggest you a workaround. If you are comfortable, you can install it from the PPA as suggested in that answer link. But remember to not remove python 3.5 as it might break your system.
    – Prahlad Yeri
    Jun 17, 2017 at 19:11

1 Answer 1

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I guess you didn't read that question carefully, The answer to your question is No, it's not going to be available it Ubuntu 16.04 at all.

For 16.04, Python 3.5 is in frozen state, the only updates for python 3 you get is patches for 3.5.

So your final assumes is true:

Packages are frozen and only bug fixes and security issues results in updates...

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  • No, that is actually how I interpreted the answers. I just found it hard to believe that it would be frozen for an LTS that will be supported for 5 years so I was uncertain if I had misunderstood something. But it's all clear now. Thanks!
    – Bamse
    Jun 17, 2017 at 19:01
  • You're welcome, that's how an LTS really become a more stable and reliable version... By the way you can accept the answer by checking the gray thick if you think it was helpful to you ;)
    – Ravexina ♦
    Jun 17, 2017 at 19:03

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