On 23 Feb 2016 22:00, "Jason L Tibbitts III" <tibbs(a)math.uh.edu> wrote:
One annoying difference between packaging for Fedora and EPEL7 (and
probably older) is the fact that Python packages in Fedora are required
to provide "python2-foo" whereas many EL7 packages don't. This leads to
ifdefs and unpleasantness, and kind of complicates our ability to hide
some details behind macros.
As I see it, the easiest way to hide this (besides RH maintainers
updating those packages with the extra Provides:) is to add a bunch of
empty packages named "python2-foo" which have nothing but a dependency
on "python-foo".
I can get a review process exception from FPC and script up the import
of these things pretty trivially. The question is: would anyone object
to this? Obviously we'll have to have some way of detecting any
conflicts which might arise, which can be done pretty easily with some
scripting.
Even just getting python2-setuptools in would eliminate a lot of cruft.
There are, I believe, 166 packages which might need this, though we
don't have to add them all at once if that makes things more palatable.
And if there's a need to discuss this at a meeting, could someone add it
to the agenda (and remind me of the meeting time)?
Do just to be clear from your wording you are talking about RHEL python
packages that are known as python-foo in RHEL rather than python2-foo
there, since there is no other python within base to cause confusion?
Of course by guidelines python- on Fedora should be pointed at python3-
these days as that's the default runtime - correct?
So these proposed would be not actually conflicting with base (no python2-
in base) but just sort of supplementing them to make packaging EPEL python
stuff easier on dependencies with less %if {?el6} conditionals?
How should this be maintained going forward into 7.3+ in case RH bring more
into base... There wouldn't be an EPEL component for that item. Unless you
want to handle checking each milestone for fresh python packages to dummy?
;)
In principle I think it a worthwhile endeavour in practice I think it might
complicate bug reporting to the correct component (EPEL vs RHEL and any
future python packages missing it).