Re: upstream python concerns, python3-full package for bullseye

[Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>]

Hi Elana,

Thanks for bringing this topic in the channel, and speaking with the
Python Steering Council, plus Mathias and Stefano. That's very much
appreciated.

On 2/11/21 7:12 PM, Elana Hashman wrote:
> - When users install Python, it should be easy to install all required
>   modules for what upstream considers core, including venv, distutils,
>   and lib2to3.

I understand that upstream python guys probably think the way to consume
python stuff is through venv, pip, and setuptools. I have a very
different view on this, and probably I'm not alone.

We (Debian people) indeed prefer if our user can enjoy a packaged
versions of things if they are available (and that's not specific to
Python). In such a packaged environment, venv and distutils are useless,
as the distribution is taking care of all what these tools would do
without apt or dpkg. I do prefer my system to *not* have venv support,
for example.

So indeed, it's a good thing to *not* include distutils and venv by
default when someone installs python.

As for lib2to3, is this a joke? Lib2to3 is a complete failure to begin
with. Upstream python developer naively thought everyone would just
switch at once to Python3, but it never happened, which is why things
like six exist (ie: to bring a layer of compatibility between python 2
and 3 during the transition).
Also, since we got rid of Python 2, is this a (naive) call to bring a
library that could convert old code which nobody cared to port in time?
This also will be a failure, IMO. Lib2to3 is just an utility, which has
nothing to do on a standard user computer, unless they really know what
it does and explicitly want to use it (and in that case, it's easy for
them to fetch it).

> I propose that we add a python3-full* metapackage for
>   bullseye. (*We can use a different name, but it must be a name not
>   currently in use.)

Please do not add distutils, venv and lib2to3 in this python3-full
metapackage. IMO that's falling into a design that isn't Debian. This
would probably be best in a "python3-dev-full" or something similar, as
from the distribution perspective, we see them as developer use only.
Don't confuse our users so that they install something they don't need.

Hoping that what I wrote is making sense,
Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)