[Pkg-sugar-devel] MBF: Removing old GNOME python bindings

[James Cameron]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2016 at 05:37:19PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Quoting Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (2016-08-01 16:43:06)
> > On 29/07/16 00:20, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> >> Quoting Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (2016-07-28 23:29:00)
> >>> It is high time that we remove the old GNOME python bindings. We 
> >>> have had the "new" GObject introspection support since at least 
> >>> Squeeze. The old ones are completely unmaintained and unsupported.
> >>>
> >>> I'd like to get gnome-python, gnome-python-extras, pyorbit, 
> >>> nautilus-python and pygtksourceview removed from testing for the 
> >>> Stretch release. Most of the gnome-python and gnome-python-extras 
> >>> binaries have already been removed. This is the final push.
> >>>
> >>> Removing pygtk and pygobject-2 may be unreasonable for Stretch, so 
> >>> if that can't happen we'll file bugs soon after the Stretch release 
> >>> (or file them earlier and bump the severity after the release) to 
> >>> get it done for Buster.
> >>>
> >>> For gnome-python{,-extras}, pyorbit, nautilus-python and 
> >>> pygtksourceview there are 54 reverse dependencies, and only 2 of 
> >>> them are key packages. One of those (cinnamon) doesn't actually need 
> >>> to depend on any of these packages and can just drop the dependency, 
> >>> and the other (hamster-applet) will need to be updated to a new 
> >>> upstream version or get removed as well.
> >> 
> >> The Sugar project is actively working towards migration from pygtk to 
> >> pygobject but is unlikely to finish that work before the freeze of 
> >> Stretch, unfortunately.
> >
> > I see that some of sugar has already been ported, e.g. 
> > sugar-toolkit-gtk3. Is there really no way things can be ported in 
> > time? These modules have been deprecated for years and we'd really 
> > like to get rid of them.
> 
> Sugar is an environment, where you can execute so-called "activities".  
> Hundreds of activities exist, where some of them is packaged for Debian.
> 
> Core Sugar components now uses python-sugar3 a.k.a. sugar-toolkit-gtk3, 
> but Sugar as an environment (called "Sucrose") is still defined as 
> including *both* the modern python-sugar3 *and* legacy python-sugar. 
> Many activities have not yet migrated yet, and Sugar without legacy 
> support will provide a severely broken Sugar experience.
> 
> 
> > Also, I wonder if we really need three versions of sugar.
> 
> I believe there is currently 2 (not 3) versions of Sugar in Debian.
> 
> 
> > The only remaining rdep for 0.88 seems to be sugar-moon-activity. That 
> > seems unmaintained: we have version 11 while upstream has 17, and the 
> > last maintainer activity was in 2010. Thus I have filed an RC bug on 
> > sugar-base-0.88 to get it out of Stretch.
> 
> Thanks.  I simply didn't take time to do that because it involved 
> packages maintained outside of the Sugar team (that Moon actitivy).
> 
> 
> > As for sugar-toolkit 0.98, there's only sugar-calculate-activity and 
> > sugar-presence-service (last upstream activity 2011, package 
> > description says it is deprecated) still depending on it. Maybe we 
> > should remove those as well so we can kill sugar 0.98?
> 
> No.  That package is part of legacy support in Sugar, it is discouraged 
> to develop any new activities based on that library, but there are 
> hundreds of Sugar activities still depending on it.

sugar-toolkit 0.109.0.2 was recently released upstream (10th July), so
packaging that would remove one appearance of lag.

> Yes, most of those activities are not in Debian - just as most of shell 
> scripts depending on Zsh is not in Debian, but it would still be a bad 
> idea to kick that package judging from its reverse dependencies (I 
> guess: I am not a Zsh user myself).
> 
> 
> > Getting those fixed or removed would mean that we don't have to ship 
> > multiple versions of sugar, and that we can get rid of the static 
> > GNOME python bindings.
> 
> Kicking Sugar 0.88 would indeed mean that we ship only a single version 
> of Sugar - but kicking python-sugar would cripple Sugar, just as I guess 
> kicking gtk2 would cripple GNOME.

Agreed.  If kicking gtk2 is a goal, that would have interesting
impacts.

> 
> 
>  - Jonas
> 
> -- 
>  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
>  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
> 
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-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/