On 18/05/2021 16.19, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> There are a few mentions of Debian, but no explanation of what the issue
> is about. Can you elaborate on that?

Debian and Debian-based distros like Ubuntu are applying downstream
packages and split CPython interpreter and stdlib into multiple
packages. For example venv and distutils is split out and ensurepip is
patched out. Debian packages were also missing dependencies on
ca-certificates and tzdata, which are required for Python's ssl and
zoneinfo modules. The changes caused usability issues for new and
sometimes even for seasoned users of Python.

I have contacted the SC in the beginning of this year and asked them to
work with Debian maintainers. Some issues have been addressed and will
be available in future releases. Matthias' talk at the language summit
is related to the effort of improving Debian packaging.

Christian