[Python-apps-team] Bug#585249: mayavi2: Python string exceptions no more allowed in Python 2.6

[Sandro Tosi]

Package: mayavi2
Version: 3.3.2-1
Severity: minor
User: debian-python at lists.debian.org
Usertags: python2.6

Hello,
One of the changes brought by Python 2.6 is the removal of string
exceptions, so they won't work in Python 2.6 (just a side note: they
were also buggy before, since they were not guaranteed to work
reliable even in <2.6); as an example:

$ python2.5 -c "raise 'eggs'"
-c:1: DeprecationWarning: raising a string exception is deprecated
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
eggs

$ python2.6 -c "raise 'eggs'"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: exceptions must be old-style classes or derived from BaseException, not str

Since 2.6 is the planned default version for the upcoming new Debian
stable release, there are chances your package may be affected by this
change.

We are not sure your package is impacted, since the exception raise
can be in a dead or very rare branch of the code, and so simply never
being executed. We would like to leverage your package maintainer
status and the relationship with upstream authors to inspect more
deeply the issue and act accordingly (that includes: making this bug
release critical, closing it as irrelevant, tagging it 'wontfix', or
whatever is appropriate).

Jakub Wilk made the discovery of the problem and kindly prepared a
list [1] of all identified packages (downloaded on 2010-06-09) along
with files & lines that triggered the pattern search.

[1] http://people.debian.org/~morph/strexp/string-exceptions.lintian

This mass-bug filing was announced at 2010-06-06 on [2] (see the
thread and the references there).

[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00097.html

We do not consider the whole situation a stopper for the Python
transition to 2.6, except (of course) for those single bugs where
severity will be increased.

Thanks in advance for your attention,
Sandro on behalf of debian-python