[Debian-astro-maintainers] Bug#1058104: astropy-helpers: FTBFS: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'imp'

[Ole Streicher]

Hi Boyuan Yang,

On 14.06.24 19:50, Boyuan Yang wrote:
> -> % build-rdeps python3-astropy-helpers
> Reverse Build-depends in unstable/main:
> 
> astroquery
> hipspy
> 
> Found a total of 2 reverse build-depend(s) for python3-astropy-helpers.
> 
> Two reverse-dependencies exist, and both of them are not having active
> upstream development. You are also listed as the uploader for them.
> 
> If you believe that this issue will not be fixed upstream, please review
> the current status of these packages and determine how to proceed. Thanks!

Hipspy is currently unmaintained upstream RC buggy in Debian. Since it 
seems not really abandoned upstream, I still keep it in unstable, having 
some hope that maintenance will resume at some future point. If they 
re-start, the will need to migrate from astropy-helpers in any case, so 
I'd keep the state here as it is. Removing astropy-helpers is therefore 
not a problem here.

For astroquery, I am not an uploader; however I will have a look how to 
update it (it is team maintained anyway). They didn't have the resources 
to migrate away from astropy-helpers yet, and they come with an updated 
local copy of it (because it is abandoned upstream). Using this copy 
would be the way to go here; it is in any case only temporary, and it 
will be the only package that somehow uses astropy-helpers for some 
time. Updating Debian's astropy-helpers instead would not worth the 
effort, and would also send wrong signals to the users to use a clearly 
abandoned package.

Astroquery is still actively maintained on Github; the last commit was 4 
days ago. The development is very close to astropy, so I am confident 
about the future removal of astropy-helpers from astroquery.

I hope that helps to answer your questions?

After I team-updated astroquery, I will write an removal request for 
astropy-helpers.

Best

Ole