Bug#935927: Suggests instead of comment of Python2 only packages? (Was: debian-science: migrate all python dependencies to their python3 variant)

[Sandro Tosi]

Hey Andreas and others

On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 5:51 AM Andreas Tille <andreas at an3as.eu> wrote:
> Regarding your change:
>
>     Switch every python dependency to Python3 (removing packages no longer
>     available, commenting out python2-only packages); Closes: #935927
>
> I'm wondering whether it would not be better to rather
>
>     Suggests: python2-only
>
> packages.

i'm not very familiar on how people uses this tasks packages, but if
(say) 90% of the python modules are python3-only, how can you use that
10% that's python2 only? you cant write code unless it's very
specialized to that specific module and uses *none* of the py3k-only
packages; most likely that module will get removed if there is no py3k
support or if there is, we're gonna remove the py2 package anyway.

the reason i left them as comment is for the science team to
"remember" they used to be there and decide at a later time what to
do: is the package still in Debian and been ported to py3k? add it
back. was it removed? remove the commented line.

>  If the packages are commented out they become absolutely
> invisible while per policy suggested packages do not need to exist and
> thus the metapackages would not block a removal of the packages
> themselves.

the way we're tracking the removal (via
http://sandrotosi.me/debian/py2removal/index.html) considers also the
Suggests fields as a rdeps. Also i dont see anything about not being
avaible as a valid state in
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#binary-dependencies-depends-recommends-suggests-enhances-pre-depends
for suggests

> Since you felt a need to change this in Git I guess you are interested
> in a soonish upload.

indeed i am :)

>  So if we have some consensus about the item above
> I'll upload to get the changes applied.

i gave you my opinion, but i'm happy with whatever the team comes up
about it, if that means we can upload soon :)

Cheers,
-- 
Sandro "morph" Tosi
My website: http://sandrotosi.me/
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