The sorry state of Python in Debian
Looking at the sorry state of Python in Debian, makes me wonder if we shouldn’t enforce team maintainance of packages above a certain popularity/importance/whatever threshold. People worked hard in the last months to fix any bugs that would prevent Python2.6 to land in unstable and yet nothing happens. Time passes by and we will eventually end up with Squeeze having a horribly outdated Python version.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Good luck with enforcing! Might I suggest you simply start working on Python instead of dealing with meta problems?
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
I am very disappointed with Debian’s Python. As time passes, I am getting more and more convinced that Debian’s priorities are simply not suit to my needs. If the number of things I have to build myself continues to
grow, I will soon not even be able to say I use Debian anymore, so maybe it’s time to pick another distro. I just have to decide what alternative makes me feel less bad!… :/
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Well, having nothing to do with Python’s interpreter maintenance and watching it from outside, it seems that the same developer is currently uploading Python 2.6 to Ubuntu ( http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/p/python-defaults/python-defaults_2.6.4-0ubuntu2/changelog ), while not to Debian. Is there any reason for it to be in Ubuntu and not in Debian? Lesser requirements?
December 30th, 2009 at 12:20 am
I’ve been bothered for quite a while about this post. Since I do a lot of stuff in python and debian.
However, I’ve looked into Miriam’s link above, it seems, that Matthias Klose has uploaded the python version to debian experimental (Tue, 27 Oct 2009) even before he uploaded it to ubuntu (Fri, 30 Oct 2009).
If people use it, and test it, then it should be moved to sid. So I think work to test and report bugs would be appreciated.
Despite this, I agree with you, that python should be maintained like pearl (2 people), or by a group of dev’s (like octave) not just one man.