Re: Re: Challenges packaging Python for a Linux distro - at Python Language Summit
Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> writes:
> For software development work, I compile my own Python interpreters
> and libraries, because I need to develop against a variety of
> different versions of these, sometimes in chroots, to be able to
> target other distros and releases thereof. I keep all these in my
> homedir or otherwise outside of normal system-wide installation
> paths. Bear in mind that this isn't just a Debian problem, for
> decades Red Hat has also advised programmers not to rely on their
> /usr/bin/python for custom development because it is patched and
> tuned specifically for running system applications packaged for
> their distro and not intended as a general-purpose Python
> distribution.
There are tools that will help you do this. e.g. pyenv, asdf, etc.
But, yes, for my own software development, I gave up trying to use
Debian python packages years ago, because I found I was spending way
more time trying to package the required dependencies (and dependencies
of dependencies of dependencies) then I spending developing my
application. This gets even worse if you want to support rpm based
distributions. Plus the fact that I was becoming increasingly concerned
that if I upgraded library python3-L for application A, I might
accidentally break applications B, C, and D also, and testing/fixing
everything at the same time not really feasible. So now I use asdf +
poetry/virtualenvs now, plus Docker for distribution.
As a result, I can upgrade the dependencies in each application one
application at a time. If an application breaks, I just need to fix that
one application, without breaking everything else at the same time. I
can upgrade the OS distribution, and not be concerned (mostly anyway)
that it will break my applications in weird and wonderful ways that I
could not predict.
This isn't so useful for distribution of Python based desktop
applications, but I don't do a lot of that (and probably would be
looking for a good off-the-shelf solution if I did).
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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