Last Tuesday (2015-08-18) we had a Python BoF at DebConf15 discussing
various Debian Python related topics. You can download a recording of
it from here¹ or here² thanks to our amazing Video Team.
Short summary:
removing python-support from the archive
========================================
We discussed what needs to be done in order to remove deprecated
dh_pysupport from Stretch. There were almost 300 packages still using
it³ so we organized a sprint to convert those and in next few days fixed
more than 100 packages (some prepared by our new contributors: Ana,
Larissa and Valerie - how about that, Debian Women? :)
Many are still not fixed, so if you want to help: we are coordinating
our efforts on whiteboard⁴, please join, instructions are here⁵.
Once all packages are converted, dh_pysupport will start returning 1
exit code so that no new packages can be built with it (packages already
built with it outside Debian main will continue to work in Stretch as
all needed triggers / byte compilation scripts will be available)
removing dh-python from python3's Depends
=========================================
python3 package depends on dh-python to make sure all packages that were
using dh_python3 provided by this package are still buildable. dh-python
package is not really needed for everyone who installs python3 so Piotr
would like to remove it at some point (hopefully before releasing Stretch).
We discussed how to raise awareness of this issue.
Lintian already checks that, we need fixes.
It's not a big problem though compared to...
removing old dh_python2 from python package
===========================================
dh-python's dh_python2 is written in Python 3 so python3's solution
(dependency on dh-python) cannot be used here (as python install would
pull in python3 and we don't want to do that, even if replacing python
with python3 is our goal). We discussed what can we do to get rid of
this older version of dh_python2. The fix is trivial (add dh-python to
Build-Depends) but there are ~500 packages that prevent us from removing
it.
There's a mass bug filling proposal⁶ on this mailing list (debian-devel one
will follow soon). The goal is to get rid of old dh_python2 before releasing
Stretch. Piotr wants to remove dh_python2 from python in January 2016 (or
sooner, depending on the number of package that will FTBFS if it's done).
This is a great way for newcomers to start contributing, BTW.
It's easier than pysupport one and Piotr will happily check/sponsor
everyone who wants to prepare a NMU.
Python 3.5 as supported
=======================
python3-defaults in experimental already has 3.5 as supported.
Ubuntu did this change as well and reported back that it's not as problematic
as many previous transitions we had in the past. Some concerns were
raised that many upstreams didn't test their code with 3.5 as its final
version is still not released (and services like Travis do not enable
it). In some places the packaging assumes all python3 to be available,
but the build dependency on python3-all{,-dev} is missing.
We will upload 3.5 as supported to unstable once GCC transition is
(almost?) done and upstream releases final version - expect it around end
of September. 3.5 will be marked as default and 3.4 removed from
supported once most of our packages are working fine with new version.
more python3-foo packages
=========================
Python3Port team⁷ is doing a great job, but more help is needed. Please
join if you want to help porting Debian tools or packages to Python 3.
Yet another tool that Piotr wants to take over the world with was demonstrated.
It was written during Debconf but Piotr still wants to polish it a bit
before pushing sources somewhere (hopefully he will find some time to
do it this weekend).
Piotr briefly talked with ftp-master about it and most probably
a PPAEXT repo will be provided with most of pypi.python.org available as Debian
packages. PPAEXT will not be available this year, so pypi.debian.net
will be used in the meantime (Marcin already promised to help with setting
up infrastructure on Amazon to build them).
Compared to stdeb this new tool generates Build-Depends, copyright file,
pypy- and -doc packages (with rebuilt Sphinx docs) and has some hidden
options (like --dpmt or --papt). It also generates XB-Python-Egg-Name
to make package names translations easier (still not sure about
XB-Python-Egg-Version with raw upstream version). More useful metadata
from PyPI would be useful, though.
other topics
============
* stripping -dbg packages - dh_strip does that by default, how can we
change that? The best option would be to patch dh_strip to not do that
if package name ends with -dbg, but there are no volunteers to do that
yet. Anyone interested? There is a bug for lintian open (#795261) to
at least warn about stripped -dbg packages).
* backporting Python 3's stdlib modules to Python 2 - avoid if possible.
* improving Pybuild's documentation - https://wiki.debian.org/Python/Pybuild
is there but documentation should be provided alongside with the package,
who wants to help?
* notes on gobby⁸
[¹] http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/Python_BoF.webm
[²] http://youtu.be/7bWbbLilnYY
[³] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=pysupport-deprecation;users=debian-python@lists.debian.org
[⁴] http://whiteboard.debian.net/python-support-removal.wb
[⁵] https://wiki.debian.org/Python/TransitionToDHPython2
[⁶] https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2015/08/msg00054.html
[⁷] https://wiki.debian.org/Python/Python3Port
[⁸] infinote://gobby.debian.org/debconf15/bof/Python
--
Piotr Ożarowski Debian GNU/Linux Developer
www.ozarowski.pl www.griffith.cc www.debian.org
GPG Fingerprint: 1D2F A898 58DA AF62 1786 2DF7 AEF6 F1A2 A745 7645
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature