Re: changes in python packaging

[Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org>]

Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org> wrote:

> * Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>, 2013-09-15, 13:54:
>>> I'm having problems with one of my packages that includes a python
>>> module. The package is vips.  I am not a python person, so this may
>>> be simple.
>>>
>>> The last time I built the package, there were several module binary
>>> files that got installed appropriately.  For example:
>>>
>>>% dpkg --listfiles python-vipscc| grep vmaskmodule.a
>>>/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/vipsCC/vmaskmodule.a
>>>/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vipsCC/vmaskmodule.a
>>
>> Well, to start off, this doesn't look correct at all.  Python
>> modules are never .a files; these appear to be spurious static
>> builds of the modules because you're using a non-pythonic build
>> system that assumes it's appropriate to build both shared and static
>> versions of "libraries".  But these are not libraries, they're DSOs;
>> you should not ship these .a files in your package.
>
> ACK
>
> You might want to try out lintian4python, which emits:
>
> w: python-vipscc: static-extension
> usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/vipsCC/vmaskmodule.a
> w: python-vipscc: static-extension
> usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vipsCC/vmaskmodule.a
>
> . . .

Good to know about.  Thanks.

Thanks to both of you for the helpful responses.  This makes perfect
sense...while I'm not much of a python programmer (I did one
decent-sized python project in 1997 or thereabouts), I can see that
there would be no use for a .a file by a python program.  I already have
other stuff in my rules file to get rid of some other files that vips
installs that we don't want.  I'll just tweak the rule to remove the
appropriate .a files as well.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org>