[Python-Dev] Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB)

[Anthony Baxter]

On Tuesday 28 November 2006 23:19, Robin Bryce wrote:
> python2.4 profile (pstats) etc, was removed due to licensing
> issues rather than FHS. Should not be an issue for python2.5 but
> what, in general, can a vendor do except break python if their
> licensing policy cant accommodate all of pythons batteries ?

That's a historical case, and as far as I know, unique. I can't 
imagine we'd accept any new standard library contributions (no 
matter how compelling) without the proper licensing work being 
done.


> python2.4 distutils is excluded by default. This totally blows in
> my view but I appreciate this one is a minefield of vendor
> packaging politics. It has to be legitimate for Python /
> setuptools too provide packaging infrastructure and conventions
> that are viable on more than linux. Is it unreasonable for a
> particular vendor to decide that, on their platform, the will
> disable Python's packaging conventions ? Is there any way to keep
> the peace on this one ?

I still have no idea why this was one - I was also one of the people 
who jumped up and down asking Debian/Ubuntu to fix this idiotic 
decision. Personally, I consider any distributions that break the 
standard library into non-required pieces to be shipping a _broken_ 
Python. As someone who writes and releases software, this is a 
complete pain. I can't tell you how many times through the years 
I'd get user complaints because they didn't get distutils installed 
as part of the standard library.

(The only other packaging thing like this that I'm aware of is 
python-minimal in Ubuntu. This is done for installation purposes 
and wacky dependency issues that occur when a fair chunk of the O/S 
is actually written in Python. It's worth noting that the entirety 
of the Python stdlib is a required package, so it doesn't cause 
issues.)

Anthony
-- 
Anthony Baxter     <anthony at interlink.com.au>
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.