Hi Elana, Thanks for bringing this topic in the channel, and speaking with the Python Steering Council, plus Mathias and Stefano. That's very much appreciated.
On 2/11/21 7:12 PM, Elana Hashman wrote: > - When users install Python, it should be easy to install all required > modules for what upstream considers core, including venv, distutils, > and lib2to3. I understand that upstream python guys probably think the way to consume python stuff is through venv, pip, and setuptools. I have a very different view on this, and probably I'm not alone. We (Debian people) indeed prefer if our user can enjoy a packaged versions of things if they are available (and that's not specific to Python). In such a packaged environment, venv and distutils are useless, as the distribution is taking care of all what these tools would do without apt or dpkg. I do prefer my system to *not* have venv support, for example. So indeed, it's a good thing to *not* include distutils and venv by default when someone installs python. As for lib2to3, is this a joke? Lib2to3 is a complete failure to begin with. Upstream python developer naively thought everyone would just switch at once to Python3, but it never happened, which is why things like six exist (ie: to bring a layer of compatibility between python 2 and 3 during the transition). Also, since we got rid of Python 2, is this a (naive) call to bring a library that could convert old code which nobody cared to port in time? This also will be a failure, IMO. Lib2to3 is just an utility, which has nothing to do on a standard user computer, unless they really know what it does and explicitly want to use it (and in that case, it's easy for them to fetch it). > I propose that we add a python3-full* metapackage for > bullseye. (*We can use a different name, but it must be a name not > currently in use.) Please do not add distutils, venv and lib2to3 in this python3-full metapackage. IMO that's falling into a design that isn't Debian. This would probably be best in a "python3-dev-full" or something similar, as from the distribution perspective, we see them as developer use only. Don't confuse our users so that they install something they don't need. Hoping that what I wrote is making sense, Cheers, Thomas Goirand (zigo)
