On 23 Feb 2016 22:00, "Jason L Tibbitts III" <tibbs@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).