[Python-modules-team] Bug#936745: Bug#936745: reducing matplotlib2 build-depends.

[Scott Kitterman]

On November 13, 2019 2:10:49 AM UTC, Sandro Tosi <morph at debian.org> wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 9:24 AM peter green <plugwash at p10link.net>
>wrote:
>> I am guessing that many of these are to get testsuite coverage for
>optional features and are not strictly needed for the build, while
>testing stuff is nice I don't think it's vital for software that is on
>it's way out. I tried removing all of the aforementioned packages
>except python-setuptools and python-kiwisolver from the build-depends
>(and I uninstalled all python 2 packages from the chroot where I was
>doing my test builds before I installed the remaining build-depends).
>
>well, i dont think it's a good reason to just stop testing complex
>software tho. some of those dependencies are required so that mpl can
>build extensions (in particular for the GUI backends) so if you remove
>them, the mpl build system is smart enough to disable those
>extensions, resulting in a graphic library without any GUI bindings to
>work with. that doesnt sound ideal.
>
>I'm gonna go thru some of the dependencies and will see if i can
>remove some, in particular now that i've remored the -doc package from
>the git repo, but i'm not gonna get rid the whole unittest suite.
>
>thanks for your work on this, and to nudge me into looking deeper at
>mpl2 deps

I'd like to encourage you to drop python-qt4 and the Qt4 backend regardless of the rest.  Qt4 is definitely getting removed this cycle, so this has got to go, sooner or later (I'd prefer sooner).  The Qt5 backend should be enough.

Scott K