Re: Work on a current Debian Python policy (was: Lintian warnings for Python packaging?)
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not aware of any ongoing work. I would be willing to help work on such
> a thing, but we currently lack a good mechanism for developing/approving
> such a policy.
With clear policy and precise goal you won't need approving mechanism
to see if they work for defined set of cases or not.
While everybody want policy just to know how to do thing properly,
there are in fact very few people who really understand how
complicated is the task of maintaining python code, modules and
applications. When there is precise goal, next action is to collect
scenarios for the whole install/update/remove lifecycle of Python code
in Debian. Only after this step is complete it is possible to start
drafting self-explanatory architecture that will be capable to support
all these scenarios.
There is no need in mechanism for developing a policy - in wiki
everybody can start contributing immediately with a full history of
changes. There can be a sprint though to force the progress and keep
work focused. To make it easier to contribute scenarios a template can
come handy.
I've edited http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPython to be concise
introduction into the problems with Python code packaging, summarized
issues with the current policy, but still can't provide vision for a
new policy. That's why I'd like to see
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPython/Tutorial with step-by-step
instructions and explanations of the reasons why things should be done
in some particular way, what problems arise if they won't done as
requested, and how it makes maintenance easier. There can be a series
of tutorials starting with most basic packaging scenario (one module)
and gradually move to most complicated (application with several
C-modules installed in virtualenv).
There is a difference in Scenario and Tutorial in that Tutorial is
based on some policy draft while Scenario concentrates on a very-very
source of the problem. I.e. scenario is "As a user, I want some stable
version of that Python module to be present for my scripts in my
Debian installation" or "As an admin, I want to install Trac in
isolated environment and upgrade it separately as security fixes are
coming out".
--
anatoly t.
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