Re: wisdom of updating woody python & gtk to unstable

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Luc Lefebvre <luc.lefebvre@mcgill.ca> writes:
> I am developing an app using the default woody python/gtk install.  Would 
> it be wise to update to the "unstable" python <2.2> and python-gnome 
> <1.99> and all of the associated libraries.  Basically I would like the 
> added functionality in the newer python-gnome bindings but wouldn't want 
> to break my system.

I think python-2.2 is the first version where, by default, lambdas
work the way I expect:

  def add_n(n):
    return lambda(k): n+k
  add4 = add_n(4)
  print add4(2)  # prints 6

If you've had some training as a Scheme programmer, you might find
this handy.  (In previous versions of Python, the scope of the n
parameter to add_n didn't extend to within the lambda.)  It sounds
like you've also decided you want the newer python-gnome.

You might look at the packages that are in testing.  There's a
python2.2 package and python-gnome 1.4.2-3, which is the exact same
version as in stable.  The version in unstable is 1.4.4-7, though; if
you know there's a much newer version, you might file a wishlist bug
against the python-gnome package, and/or install it yourself under
/usr/local.

The big caveat with going to unstable is that, even if you only really
want a single package, you'll probably wind up upgrading most of your
system.  The big hangup right now is that most packages depend on a
specific version of libc6, which has a couple of known bugs, so
nothing new is making it into testing.  My impression is that this
problem is a lot less bad with testing as it is right now.  In general
testing will be less bleeding-edge than unstable but newer than
stable, if that's the sort of thing you want for a personal workstation.

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell