Re: python again (was: Bug#225999: ITP: debsync -- installed packages synchronization tool)
On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 11:39:03AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> I am of the opinion that versioned dependencies are used far too often
> on Debian, and that they are also forced upon us too often by packages
> that install into directories for specific Python versions.
>
> For instance, on my system, I have
> /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/debconf.py. This is a pure Python
> module and it has no business being in /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages.
> It should be in /usr/lib/site-python, so that it will be visible to any
> version of Python. If it requires feature specific to Python 2.3, it
> could Depend on python (>= 2.3) and leave it at that. This would
> greatly simplify the problem.
I should add that the problem in this case does not end with debconf.
Any package that requires debconf.py must now be written to depend
specifically on python2.3, call python2.3 in its bang-path, etc.
Alternatively, it must depend on python (<<2.4) or conflict on python
(>=2.4) since it must have the /usr/bin/python that is 2.3. Neither of
these solutions are great.
This is also the case with many other packages. There are a lot of
unnecessary dependencies on specific Python versions out there.
-- John
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