Questions about the Debian Python Policy
I have some questions relating to python packages and the python
policy.
I maintain a pure python program (gramps) that relies heavily on other
python packages: python-gnome2, python-glade2, python-reportlab and
python-gnome2-extras.
Section 3.1 of the python policy states that programs which can use
any version of python which depend on python module Foo should depend
on python-foo, not python<X>.<Y>-foo. This can be problematic for the
following reason.
Let's use gramps(*) as an example and that the default python switches
to 2.4. A user upgrades python (leaving 2.3 on the system), gramps and
python-glade2 to python 2.4 versions but does not ugrade python-gnome2
(this works since python 2.3 is still installed). All the dependencies
will be met but gramps will not work as it will not find all the
required (2.4 based) dependencies.
How do you propose avoiding this situation without having programs
depend on python<X>.<Y>-foo packages explicitly?
Second question. Gramps installs its private modules in
/usr/share/gramps instead of /usr/lib/site-python/gramps as specified
in the policy. Is this ok? If not, why?
Third question. The examples for compiling python modules in
the postinst use a specific version of python. Since gramps is
compiled against the default verson of python, is it ok to just use
PYTHON=python?
Please CC me in replies as I am not subscribed to debian-python.
(*) Anyone inspecting the gramps package may notice that it is missing
the proper python dependency. It will be added in the next upload.
--
James Treacy
treacy@debian.org
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