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Re: XS-Python-Version vs pyversions



On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Mikhail Gusarov<dottedmag@dottedmag.net> wrote:
>
> Twas brillig at 11:37:50 07.09.2009 UTC-07 when vorlon@debian.org did gyre and gimble:
>
>  SL> They were part of the design that came out of the python packaging
>  SL> BoF in DebConf 6 that you then proceeded to ignore entirely.
>
> Is this design and rationale written down somewhere? It's hard to follow
> policy which contains completely opaque requirements.

+1   It is impossible to reverse reasons based on initial statements
like "This is used to track packages during Python transitions, and is
also used by some packaging scripts to automatically generate
appropriate Depends and Provides lines."

What is the process of "tracking packages"? Any examples? Even if
Depends and Provides are automatically generated developer still
supply X-...-Python headers manually, so this add nothing more than
another level of indirection with some bit of uncertainty to
maintainer's mind.

Quiting further from
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/ch-module_packages.html#s-specifying_versions

-- cut here ---
Your control file should also have a line:

 XB-Python-Version: ${python:Versions}
The python:Versions is substituted by the supported Python versions of
the binary package, based on XS-Python-Version. (If you are not using
dh_python you will need to handle this substitution yourself.) The
format of the field XB-Python-Version is the same as the
XS-Python-Version field for packages not containing extensions.
Packages with extensions must list the versions explicitely.
--- cut here ---

It does tell what spell to weave, but does not explain what problem it
is aimed to solve. Is it solely for copying Depends field from source
package to binary?


I do not get some aspects of Python packaging in Debian mostly because
there are many thing that people take for granted (and also because
the lack of time to read out all the stuff). I would be grateful if
you spot any such thing in my point of view and could explain them or
point to the exact place in docs.

Thanks.
-- 
anatoly t.


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