spyder dependency on python3-importlib-metadata

[Julian Gilbey]

Hi Alexandre,

On Sun, May 11, 2025 at 09:40:34PM +0200, Alexandre Detiste wrote:
> Le dim. 11 mai 2025 à 20:20, Julian Gilbey <julian at d-and-j.net> a écrit :
> > > I had forgotten that importlib.metadata is part of the standard library
> 
> Yes, that is not obvious at all and I had forgotten about the duality
> of this package.

:-)

> So far I've identified 4 similar remaining backports (/original version)
> of parts of the standard library:
> 
>   python3-importlib-metadata = importlib.metadata,
>   python3-importlib-resources = importlib.resources
>   python3-simplejson = json
>   python3-mock = unittest.mock
> 
> They are here [1] now but deserve their own page (naming is hard), as
> they are no "Dead Batteries".
>   [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Python/Dead%20Batteries#Backports

Quite.

> Many other backports usage has already been removed completely
> during the Trixie cycle: unittest2, random2, astunparse ...
> 
> It looks like that "mock" has fossilized around Python 3.7 and would
> be next to be dropped;
> the importlib.* & json backport are still pretty active and should stay
> 
> fissix is a copy of removed lib2to3 and should go away at the start of
> Forky cycle
> 
> Please help identify other backports you know of.

I can't think of any others offhand.

> > > Once trixie is released, we can look at this again and potentially discuss with upstream.
> 
> I think that this one upstream is fine,
> they can decide to drop legacy compat whenever they want.

Yes; I wrote this before discovering that your patch was only one step
away from working.

> > I had a look at the autopkgtest failures, and it seems trivial to fix
> > - there was an importlib-metadata dependency still listed in
> > requirements/main.yml.  Also, -5 hadn't reinstated the
> > python3-importlib-metadata dependency, so it won't build/test
> > correctly.
> 
> It did ... https://salsa.debian.org/science-team/spyder/-/pipelines/864175
> https://qa.debian.org/excuses.php?package=spyder

I thought it wouldn't, but turns out it was OK.  But without the
corresponding patch, users would get an annoying warning message every
time they start spyder if they don't have python3-importlib-metadata
installed.

> > I'm just building and testing -6 which reinstates and
> > fixes your patch, and then I'll upload it.
> 
> Thank you, very much for trying again where I failed!

It's done - as I said, you were so close!  I do have the slight
advantage of having handled modifications to the requirements files in
spyder before.  See the recent patch
debian/patches/change_setuptools_dep_to_packaging.patch

Best wishes,

   Julian