On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 12:12 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > debian-python Cc'ed > > On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 07:02:32PM -0600, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > > > This is something that Python upstream explicitly does not want; the only > > > reason for creating python-minimal was so that it could be Essential: yes, > > > not to support stripped-down Python installations. > > So why does Debian need/want python-minimal? > > (This is a question mostly for Matthias, I think, but if you know the > > answer that's great.) > > Some reasons: > > * compatability with Ubuntu -- so that packages can be easily ported back > and forth between us and them; I expect most of the work ubuntu might do > on improving boot up will require python-minimal This would be nice. Right now it's accomplished through patches Ubuntu makes to dh_python and cdbs. They'd probably like to drop those. > * allowing us to easily use python (as well as C, C++ and perl) for programs > in the base system I wouldn't mind this, but it does seem to be somewhat against the definition of "base." > * allowing us to provide python early on installs to make users happier This feels weak to me; it applies equally well to any language a user might want. > I don't know what's actually in (or more importantly not in) > python2.4-minimal though. I'm eyeballing right now. Things that jump out at me: * No character encoding, translation, or locale handling. * A little oddly, loss of shutil. * No sockets. The first one seems like it would be a show-stopper to me, unless we expect programs in the base system to only deal with ASCII. This is a fairly large addition to package, too. The second can easily be fixed; possibly just oversight. It's a small module and gives Python equivalents of cp -r, rm -r, and mv. The third seems like something software in base may want to do; I mention it specifically because perl-base include socket support. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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