Bug#996489: awscli: Cryptic error if awscli and boto versions mismatch

[Phil Endecott <spam_from_debian_bugs_2021@chezphil.org>]

Package: awscli
Version: 1.20.53-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

On a system running bullseye (11.1), I wanted to install a newer 
version of awscli. So I added sources.list entries for testing, set 
APT::Default-Release "bullseye"; and then

# apt-get install -t testing install awscli

This installed awscli 1.20.53-1, but it did not change 
python3-botocore which remained at version 1.20.0+repack-1 
(from bullseye) because awscli only requires python3-botocore 
>= 1.20.0.

"aws help" worked but this failed:

  $ aws lambda update-function-configuration help
  'StructureShape' object has no attribute 'is_document_type'

I then upgraded python3-botocore to the bookworm version, 
1.21.53+repack-1:

# apt-get install -t testing python3-botocore

and now awscli seems to function correctly.

It seems to me that awscli should have a tighter dependency on 
python3-botocore.

(I am a bit confused by the version numbers; it looks as if 
awscli 20.x corresponds to boto3 21.x ? What's going on there?)


Thanks, Phil.