[Python-Dev] In-Python virtualisation and packaging

[Vinay Sajip]

Barry Warsaw <barry <at> python.org> writes:

> Question: how hard would it be to backport the work you've done to Python 3.2?
> Obviously I'm not saying it should be ported to the official 3.2 branch, but
> if *someone* were interested in doing so, would it be possible?  Sounds like
> you can almost get there with stdlib changes, but would require a few C
> changes too (I haven't looked at the diff yet).  I'm just wondering if the
> same API could be made available to Python 3.2 as a third party module.  It
> sounds like "almost, but not quite".

I think it's feasible - as far as I know, there's nothing 3.3 specific about the
changes that were made, other than just happening to be against the default
branch. AFAIK the getpath.c/getpathp.c changes will also work on 3.2, as all
they do is look for a config file in a specific place and read a path from it if
it's there. If it's not there, no biggie. If it's there, it sets up the
sys.prefix/sys.exec_prefix values from that path.

Possibly Carl's original Python changes would be easier to work from, since the
sysconfig stuff has now changed quite a bit because of packaging coming in to
cpython. For one thing, the _INSTALL_SCHEMES dict is replaced by reading that
data from a config file.

> Is the Debian packaging branch available too?  I'd be happy to throw that in
> my PPA for Ubuntu users to play with.

My Debian-packaging-fu is not that good, I'm afraid, so there's no branch for
the .deb, as such. I made the package by running make and then

sudo checkinstall -D --fstrans=no

which takes forever (God knows why - it's many many minutes at 100% CPU) but
eventually comes up with the .deb.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip