Re: Bug#635476: current packaging work for Coverage

[Dmitry Shachnev <mitya57@gmail.com>]

Hi Ben, and everybody.

On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> On 09-Oct-2013, Dmitry Shachnev wrote:
>> Then please make sure that shebang of "coverage3" is
>> "#!/usr/bin/python3".
>
> I'm not doing anything specific to change the shebang line. That's being
> done by the Debian Python packaging tools.
>
> Also, your request contradicts the Python policy in the Debian packaging
> manual:
>
>     1.4.2 Interpreter Location
>
>     The preferred specification for the Python interpreter is
>     /usr/bin/python or /usr/bin/pythonX.Y. This ensures that a Debian
>     installation of python is used and all dependencies on additional
>     python modules are met.
>
>     <URL:http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/ch-python.html>
>
> So, the ‘/usr/bin/python3.3’ interpreter filename complies with that,
> whereas ‘/usr/bin/python3’ does not.
>
> What is your reason for wanting ‘python-coverage’ in particular to violate
> that policy?

That Policy paragraph was put there to make sure people don't use
shebangs like '#!/usr/bin/env python' or '#!/usr/local/bin/python'. I
think we should fix it to also list '/usr/bin/python3' as possible
option. Many existing Python 3 packages also use it.

Cc-ing debian-python@lists.d.o in case someone else has an opinion about this.

In your particular case, python3-coverage depends on 'python3 (<<
3.4), python3 (>= 3.3)', so when it is installed /usr/bin/python3 will
be always a link to python3.3, so the shebang doesn't matter here. But
in general, I recommend people to use non-versioned shebangs in their
packages.

--
Dmitry Shachnev