> However, in Debian case, I do not know how this can be handled as 2 packages cannot hold the same file (even if __init__ is only an empty file), and at least one must be present (if you install only one).
I'm not a python expert but I expect the least-horrible way to do this would be to ship a package that only contained the __init__. Then have all the python-backports.* packages depend on it.
