On 12 April 2025 6:18:20 pm IST, James Addison <j...@jp-hosting.net> wrote: >Hi Nilesh, Alex, > >Responding to the first point only, at the moment: > >On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 at 07:39, Nilesh Patra <nil...@debian.org> wrote: >> [ ... snip ... ] >> 1. matplotlib has historically shipped /etc/matploblibrc to force tkagg and >> patched the code >> to use this if there are no user defined rc files see [1]. However, this was >> not >> handled properly via maintscripts so that'd mean over-writing user-modified >> /etc/matplotlibrc. > >Ah; what is the problem related to the maintscripts? > >The /etc/matplotlibrc file is considered a config file by apt/dpkg (it >is not removed unless a purge is requested), so I was hoping that >shipping a default/unmodified matplotlibrc in an updated 3.10 upload >(as Alex suggests in his thread) would provide a useful additional >conflict-resolution step for anyone who has modified theirs.
I usually had to mention such files it in d/conffiles. I now tried to unpack control.tar.xz of python3-matplotlib-data and saw it there regardless. Seems dh is doing its magic so I suppose my concern quoted above is invalid. Regardless, it makes sense to still do a -3 upload. >> The backend detection logic is now better and I feel we should get rid of >> the "yield '/etc/matplotlibrc'" in >> [1] and also stop shipping the conffile both and add in a rm_conffile to >> remove previously >> installed /etc/matplotlibrc. > >I don't have a strong opinion about this part, although when in >sysadmin mode, I do tend to go looking in /etc first to find config >files. > >On the other hand, we wouldn't be the first package to read config >files from elsewhere on the filesystem - pipewire springs to mind as >another case where default config files are located under /usr/share, >for example. Right. But, pipewire is much more than a python library that is intended to be consumed by other python applications and/or end user as a part of their code. It makes sense to have binaries, command line utilities even gui apps to have a conffile in /etc. But it looks weird for a python library to have one especially when the practical benefits are not great. I really doubt if any sysadmin takes the time to edit /etc/matplotlibrc. But yes this should be targeting forky release instead. >> Probably also a d/NEWS to inform the sysadmin that this no longer works. It >> does not make >> sense to me for a python lib to have a conffile. > >+1 to a NEWS entry. I'm not so sure about removing the conffile >entirely yet, though. I think it may be safer to treat it as a >feature deprecation, allowing time for feedback about any use cases >that seem to require it and/or for users to migrate to alternatives. ACK. >Regards, >James Best, Nilesh
