removal of python2-firewall
Dear python devel,
I just noticed that since Fedora 28, package python2-firewall is no longer
available and while I know that python2 packages nobody seems to rely on
are being gradually removed nowadays, I wonder why exactly was this
particular package removed.
The problem here is that without python2 module for firewalld, one can't
use an ansible playbook to reconfigure firewall on Fedora machine:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1575428
And while switching to python3[2] may solve this particular problem, I
don't think it's a reasonable solution from Fedora perspective, which:
* packages Ansible so that it runs on python 2
* provides Firewalld to manage firewall by default
Decision to drop python2-firewall then looks little weird, as it breaks
the general expectation that ansible playbook using firewalld module is
able to reconfigure firewall on a fedora machine. Moreover other python2
modules which some ansible modules are using such as python2-libselinux
or python2-dnf are still available, and dropping python2-firewall
doesn't look very consistent. That said, these python2 subpackages will
not be installed by default[3].
The other problem here is that it's not easy to spot such problem, as
this kind of dependency is not visible via rpm requirements (see eg. BZ
1505082 for explanation :). Maintainer dropping his python2 subpackage
could very easily miss this.
What do you think? Do we want to continue dropping python2 modules and
encourage people to reconfigure ansible to run under python 3 while
shipping ansible with python 2 or do we want to keep python2 modules
used by ansible available, even thouhg this is not easy to track right
now?
And don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of switching to python3 and I agree
that helping ansible guys with python 3 testing and porting is good
for Fedora. I just don't think that dropping random packages from
distribution so that random modules doesn't work with default ansible
is a good way to do it.
[1]
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/firewalld/c/40f23213c95db820a0d725e42a...
[2] http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/python_3_supp...
[3] https://fedoramagazine.org/getting-ansible-working-fedora-23/
--
Martin Bukatovic