Re: Python modules for every supported version
On Tuesday 15 June 2004 12:09 pm, Fabio Tranchitella wrote:
> I know the number of packages in Debian is becoming a problem, simply I
> don't uderstand why python2.1 (and a lot of modules for python2.1) are
> available in testing (which will be stable soon) if it is an old version
> and two major versions have been released after it. My opinion is that
> if there are too packages, lets drop old versions of python from sarge
> (like python2.1 and python2.1-*).
There is a bit of a skew w.r.t. to version numbers in Python -- there was
a really major shift in Python's design between 2.1 and 2.2 (specifically
the change to "lexical namespaces". Iterators and generators were also
introduced then, IIRC. OTOH, Python 2.3 is a very incremental change
from 2.2. So it might've made more sense to give 2.2 a new *major* version
number. The reason for not doing this was somewhat political, as it had
to do with the change in ownership of the code (and re-licensing).
Therefore, there are a few packages which are broken by trying to use
2.2 or later (the most important by far being Zope (<<2.6)), this makes
it desirable to keep some Python 2.1 support, IMHO.
OTOH, there's very little reason to stay with Python 2.2 now that 2.3
is available (I can't think of any package I know of which was broken
by the transition from 2.2 to 2.3 -- and it's hard to imagine how that
could happen, since 2.3 is almost a perfect superset of 2.2, and only
then by an incremental amount).
It is awkward, really, that we can't just use the existing version
dependency system in Debian (i.e. with ranges), but I suppose that's
because the extension modules won't be binary-compatible. The only
way I can imagine doing that, though, would be to compile extension
modules during the install (which would require a development environment
to be present already, of course).
My point is that support for Python 2.1 makes sense, at least for some
packages. OTOH, support for Python 2.2 is largely unnecessary -- just
upgrade to Python 2.3 and all is well.
OTOH, Zope has actually moved past Python 2.1 -- versions 2.7+ use
Python 2.3.4.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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