Re: pep8 renamed to pycodestyle

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Barry Warsaw <barry@debian.org> writes:

> You might be aware that the upstream pep8 package has been renamed to
> pycodestyle. Both the command line and imports have changed, although
> not in a backward compatible way unfortunately[1].

Ah, Python. We love you, but please grow a proper API versioning system :-/

> There's a new upstream flake8 which I'm preparing in git-dpm, but it
> will be blocked until we decide what to do about the Debian pep8
> package.

(I hope the upstream ‘flake8’ now defaults to conforming with PEP 8,
instead of having default checks that contradict it.)

> I think we eventually want to rename Source:pep8 to
> Source:pycodestyle, as well as Package:pep8, Package:python-pep8, and
> Package:python3-pep8. I suppose we could at least keep the source
> package name unchanged and transition to the new binary package names.

My understanding is that renaming a source package is rather more
disruptive than renaming a binary package, is that right?

If so, I would recommend:

* Go ahead and transition the binary package names with the usual
  mechanisms <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/PackageTransition>:

  * Keep the old names as a transition package until after
    Debian Stretch is released.

  * Have the new binary packages declare Replaces and Conflicts
    relationships with the appropriate version specification of the old
    names.

  * Maybe even schedule the transition with the release team
    <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam/Transitions>, to
    allow co-ordination of dependent packages.

* Since you've determined the command-line interfaces are not
  compatible, the new commands should not be alternatives for the old.

* As a separate matter, figure out how best to rename the source package
  to better correspond with the new name upstream. This could take an
  arbitrarily long time; IMO while it is desirable to rename the source
  package, there's no tearing need yet.

-- 
 \       “Come on, if your religion is so vulnerable that a little bit |
  `\           of disrespect is going to bring it down, it's not worth |
_o__)               believing in, frankly.” —Terry Gilliam, 2005-01-18 |
Ben Finney