Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Christoph Biedl <debian.axhn@manchmal.in-ulm.de> * Package name : python-magic Version : 0.4.13 Upstream Author : Adam Hupp <adam@hupp.org> * URL : https://github.com/ahupp/python-magic/ * License : MIT Programming Lang: Python Description : A python wrapper for libmagic Tentative long description: python-magic is a python interface to the libmagic file type identification library. libmagic identifies file types by checking their headers according to a predefined list of file types. Some background: For quite some time, there have been two but incompatible implementations for python-magic, providing python bindings for libmagic (src:file). The one provided by file ("[file]") itself might be a bit older but appearently Adam Hupp's implementation ("[pypi]") provides a better feature set and might even have a broader user base. Some discussion on this took place on the debian-python list, starting at [1]: Debian currently provides [file] so at least three packages that require [pypi] ship their own code copy, more to come. In upstream[2], there has been a basic understanding between Christos Zoulas ([file]) and Adam Hupp ([pypi]) to resolve that conflict, and Adam has announced[3] to work on a merge. The tentative transition plan is as follows, and I'm open for suggestions: * Wait until [pypi] provides the [file] API. * Ship the library using a different binary package name like "Package: python-magic-pypi, Provides: python-magic". Same for python3, here and in all the following. * Ask users of python-magic to install this new package and check for regression. * Big switch when it seems feasible: Then src:file will no longer provide python-magic, this package here will do insted. (For the records, Debian maintainer for src:file is yours truly.) * Ask maintainers who ship a [pypi] code copy to use the package instead. Would be a MBF if there weren't just a few. As my Python knowledge is limited, I'm not particulary keen on maintaining this for Debian and I might even ITA it after the transition. If somebody else wishes to do the job instead, please step forward. For the filexit time however, good coordination is required. Christoph [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2017/09/msg00008.html [2] The file mailing list archive is down, relevant parts are quoted in https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2017/09/msg00015.html [3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-python/2017/10/msg00021.html
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