Bug#384189: python-gtk2: i can reproduce this bug

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 07:45:10PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le mardi 12 septembre 2006 à 10:16 +0200, Loïc Minier a écrit :
> >  That's the bulk of the problem; Josselin: I think the alternatives
> >  system doesn't offer any guarantee that any link will be touched, the
> >  symlink might not even exist.  Do you think we should consider
> >  upgrading existing installs with a diversion based system instead of
> >  the alternatives?  Or perhaps drop support for gtk1.2 via alternatives?

> I think we should entirely drop the alternatives, yes. How about the
> following plan?
>       * Remove the alternative in pygtk in favor of shipping pygtk
>         in /usr/lib/python2.4, just like the rest of the package which
>         isn't python-{support,central}ized.
>       * Just ship pygtk.py with the other files in python-gtk2, provided
>         by python-support; introduce a conflict with the previous
>         python-gtk-1.2 package to avoid upgrade issues.

> Because of the way sys.path works with .pth files, pygtk will always be
> imported from python-gtk2 first, if both packages are installed. This is
> a bit hackish, but it is only a temporary measure until we can remove
> python-gtk-1.2.

If you're confident that the path preferences are stable and will ensure
python-gtk2 is always found first when installed, this seems quite
reasonable to me, and not really hackish at all.  The current behavior in
contrast really is quite hackish, since as we discussed on IRC, the desired
behavior here never fell into the intended use of alternatives.

Cheers,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/