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Re: Python related changes for unstable/squeeze



On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> wrote:
> Le mardi 17 février 2009 à 10:09 -0800, Ondrej Certik a écrit :
>> Unfortunately from both of you I only met Matthias in person (in
>> Prague at the Ubuntu Developer Summit), but what I understood is that
>> there are some technical reasons why python-central is better.
>
> I'd be happy to hear these reasons; I'm always eager to improve
> python-support when there is room to.
>
> Currently I know one reason why you could consider python-central
> better: this is because it installs files at the same place the upstream
> packages do. This avoids breaking some (bad) packages' expectations. I
> have two remarks about this:
>      * The python-support README has documented for long how to work
>        around this problem if you encounter it (remember it concerns a
>        handful of packages).
>      * If python-support was the only tool to write files
>        to /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages, there would be no problem
>        with using this directory. However there are packages using
>        python-central and packages shipping files directly there, so it
>        is simply not possible without losing the advantages of
>        python-support (like, not introducing 50 RC bugs every time
>        something is changed).
>
> Besides, I could show you several reasons why python-support is
> superior, and at least one why python-central is broken.

I forgot already what those reasons were, Matthias told me in Prague
and they seemed reasonable to me. In fact, we were having a similar
flame discussion about python-central and python-support just before
the summit on this list and the result of which was (to me, as a
bystander) that python-support is clearly superior, so I asked
Matthias about it, and he provided some good arguments for
python-central. But these arguments should be put on the list and
things should get discussed and fixed.

Anyway, I think now it's Matthias' turn to come forward and also do a
few steps to get this discussed and eventually fixed.

Ondrej


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