Re: python3-selenium package in Debian stable
Hello Corey,
Am 13.04.25 um 06:32 schrieb Corey Goldberg:
Hi Carsten,
I got your email from the following bug report:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099792
I didn't want to email the bug list directly and have my email exposed
online :)
it would be better to discuss such things trough the Debian BTS so it's
more transparent to others what's going on, or not. :-)
Anyway, I am one of the maintainers of Selenium WebDriver (specifically
the Python bindings). We have received many reports of Selenium not
working when installed via the `python3-selenium` package in Debian and
Ubuntu.
I noticed this comment in the linked bug report:
> The final solution would be for me to
> remove python3-selenium from
> the archive as it's currently broken and
> unusable
I agree with this solution. It is a fast moving project and our
recommended way of installing it is with a Python package manager (pip,
etc) that grabs the official package from PyPI:
https://pypi.org/project/selenium/
That's not a final solution to me, at max it's a temporary solution.
I did maintain this package in the past as I needed it to have for
working in my business environment that is completely offline from the
internet. Means I have only access to the Debian repository as this is
allowed to get mirrored. So having only the option to get it installed
by pip isn't possible.
And I'm not the only person who is in such a situation.
But I also did move my home some months ago and I didn't had time to
work on the python3-selenium package in time but also no other
maintainer did step up.
The way to remove a package in Debian is to raise a RC critical bug
report, then the maintainer needs to act as after 6 weeks the package
will get removed from the testing archive otherwise.
For the stable distribution it's the same, but it will not get removed
automatically, this can only be done by the stable release team. I did
had contact with a member of this team as due the failing autopkgtests
it was spotted we have some issue because of incompatibilities.
Due lack of time and nobody really did show up for more complains the
package has not my highest priorities at the moment.
Having the broken Debian package is just causing issues for upstream
maintainers and confusion for users. If nobody can fix and maintain the
Debian package, I think everyone would be better off if it was just removed.
What do you think? How can we get it removed?
The Python library for Selenium isn't for sure not the only package that
is broken in stable. But an RC bug is existing for the package and if
nobody is jumping in the best solution in fact is to remove the package
for now.
@RT
What do you think? It's probably overdue to remove python3-selenium from
bookworm. I can't promise anything at the moment to find time fixing the
package. I'll clone the existing report so we can ensure for now also
that the current package will not be part of trixie as it's also here
broken of course.
--
Regards
Carsten
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