alternative for python
Yaroslav Halchenko
I am sorry if I am stepping in some stinky water and bringing terrible
smell along with me...
I am aware of "Report on the situation of python2.5 in Debian" which is
a clean description why python2.5 is not yet default in lenny/sid.
Someone could bring a debian policy as an argument that
alternatives must provide equivalent level of functionality and
different versions of python wouldn't do so since they might brake some
of the pieces.
I know that there are some packages which ship modules/programs
targeted only at 2.4 and not working with 2.5, but probably most of them
has hard coded call to python2.5 in their headers (if that is under
/bin) -- at least my first sample which was "buxon". But probably most
critical ones are ok to work with 2.5 now.
I know that some packages might not yet ship extensions built for 2.5,
but still, since lenny is targetting python >= 2.5, and unstable is
unstable, why don't we allow users to experiment a bit and change
default python on their systems to python2.5? (yeah yeah -- they could
probably simply ln -sf python2.5 /usr/bin/python, but that is not the
point, since alternatives are there to provide such facility)
due to my partial ignorance on the subject I am not sure what to
do with /usr/share/python/debian_defaults ... May be include it into
update-alternatives group and ship one with 2.5 as the default?
In any case -- I don't see much harm by providing users with ability to
test how well python2.5 can handle their debian system (or actually vise
versa). Also some very experimental people might eventually give a spin
to some version of pypy-translated python as the default... some
time...
In any case -- I just wanted to raise a concern and may be some
discussion -- may be I should simply a wishlist bug against python?
Cheers
--
Yaroslav Halchenko
Research Assistant, Psychology Department, Rutgers-Newark
Student Ph.D. @ CS Dept. NJIT
Office: (973) 353-5440x263 | FWD: 82823 | Fax: (973) 353-1171
101 Warren Str, Smith Hall, Rm 4-105, Newark NJ 07102
WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik
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Raphael Hertzog
> I know that some packages might not yet ship extensions built for 2.5,
> but still, since lenny is targetting python >= 2.5, and unstable is
> unstable, why don't we allow users to experiment a bit and change
> default python on their systems to python2.5? (yeah yeah -- they could
> probably simply ln -sf python2.5 /usr/bin/python, but that is not the
> point, since alternatives are there to provide such facility)
Because if we allow that, then we must be able to support such changes.
And we don't.
If you want to experiment, overwrite temporarily the symlink. If we let
people change the symlink, and if it breaks, then it's a bug in our
packaging and we have to fix it.
And it's far easier to package everything while knowing that python is a
a single python version (identified by the corresponding python package).
> In any case -- I just wanted to raise a concern and may be some
> discussion -- may be I should simply a wishlist bug against python?
No. The situation is fine as is. No need to introduce more complexity.
I pushed for such a change in perl a long time ago, and we're back to a
single perl version... let's not reiterate the mistake for python.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/