Friday 18 March 2016

Proposal: drop python-* from 'development' seed for 16.04

Hi all,

Prompted by the previous discussions on this list about
python2 on the desktop and build-depends out of main, I looked around a bit
at what was keeping various python2 packages still in main. I was surprised
to find that the Ubuntu 'development' seed includes a large number of
python-* modules seeded - 23, to be precise.

python-adns
python-cddb
python-egenix-mxproxy
python-egenix-mxstack
python-egenix-mxtexttools
python-egenix-mxtools
python-epydoc
python-gd
python-genetic
python-htmlgen
python-jabber
python-dictclient
python-librdf
python-ldap
python-pisock
python-pyao
python-pyvorbis
python-simpletal
python-xmpp
python-libxml2
python-libxslt1
python-pygresql
python-gpod

These packages were all seeded in 2007 or earlier. A number of packages have
by now been replaced in the seed by their python3 equivalents, but the above
list of packages have no python3 equivalent in the archive.

Given that developing in python2 is not generally something that we want to
promote at this point, I would argue that any of these that don't have
replacements in python3 should be dropped from the seed instead.

And if some of this functionality exists for python3 but under a different
name, we can swap them out. E.g., I just noticed python3-lxml replaces both
python-libxml2 and python-libxslt1.

Comments, objections?

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org