Re: when and why did python(-minimal) become essential?
Joey Hess writes:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> > FWIW the relevant design docs from when this was done in Ubuntu are
> > here:
> >
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EssentialPython (requirements)
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonInEssential (details)
> >
> > The rationale for the set of included modules is in the latter, and was
> > basically done by taking each module in perl-base and mapping it to its
> > Python equivalent.
>
> FWIW, that's a fairly strange way to do it, since modules are
> added/removed from perl-base as needed by the perl-using programs in the
> base system.
No, if you do look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonInEssential, you
will notice:
Do not include:
* _ssl, pickle, cPickle,
pickle ends up as a dependency of subprocess.
> For example, perl-base includes Data::Dumper because debconf
> (used to) use it, not because there's any other particular reason to
> include that module in base, and I've just asked that Data::Dumper be
> removed, so including its equivilant (pickle) in python-base on that
> rationalle is decidely strange.
Ubuntu did use perl-base just as a starting point.
> If we followed the same method for python-base, then we would
>
> a) instroduce python-base iff we had some package(s) written in python
> that we wanted in the base system (apt-listchanges comes to mind)
> b) include only the modules needed by the package(s).
We once had a python-base package and got complaints about the name
being misleading. Besides that, I got questions from Debian only
developers and Debian users to have the minimal package in Debian as
well. That does not look misleading, as long as the name implies that
you cannot expect a complete python installation.
Matthias
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