Re: python 2.4?

[Ganesan Rajagopal <rganesan@myrealbox.com>]

>>>>> Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

>> Hmm, seems a bit backward to me. What if I don't have python2.3 installed at
>> all. What's the point in keeping /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/foo.so
>> around? 

> Nothing in policy will require that you do this.  We discussed specifically
> in the BoF whether it was appropriate to allow building binary modules only
> for the current version of python, and the agreement was that yes, this was
> appropriate and support will be implemented.

Assuming that the package maintainer chose to support multiple versions,
this still doesn't explain why we should keep binary modules for python
versions that are not even installed by the user. 

Moreover, building binary modules only for the current version of python is
not always practical.  Consider the case of ctypes (a package that I
maintain). ctypes is included in upstream python2.5. So, ctypes python
packages will never include support for python >= 2.5. It doesn't make sense
to call this package python-ctypes when Debian moves to python2.5 as
default.

I understand the upgrade issues that pythonX.Y packages cause with multiple
versions of python in Debian. However, for binary modules I don't really see
an alternative in some cases. How about this alternate proposal for binary
modules

* python-foo must support the current python version. 
* python-foo can optionally include support for older python versions (I am
  still not convinced on this one).
* Alternatively, pythonX.Y-foo is allowed to support older versions of python 
  in the archive.

Ganesan

-- 
Ganesan Rajagopal