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Re: Matplotlib 3.10.0 for trixie?

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Hi James,

On 13/05/26 4:40 pm, James Addison wrote:
> Hi Nilesh,
> 
> On Sun, 10 May 2026 at 09:23, Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 31/10/25 10:00 pm, James Addison wrote:
>>> Thanks, Alexandre,
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 17:46 Alexandre Detiste <alexandre.detiste@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Trixie has been released.
>>>> We/you can proceed with the plan to remove
>>>> the current unpatched/verbatim /etc/matplotlibrc
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'll file a python3-matplotlib bugreport for this cleanup after spending a
>>> little time to trace the history of the mpl-data directory referenced in
>>> the same patch.
>> So, as per the documentation https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/customizing.html#customizing-with-matplotlibrc-files
>>
>> It searches for 4 places. The 4th place is actually "INSTALL/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc, where INSTALL is something like /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages"
>>
>> Since upstream kind of supports having matplotlibrc as a global setting, I am having second thoughts if we should just keep
>> `/etc/matplotlibrc` as that is the right place for system specific config files to reside.
>>
>> We are also installing /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc but I am unsure how useful this is.
>>
>> Could someone advice?
> 
> I'm not sure what to do about the /etc/matplotlibrc file and whether
> to include it in the python-matplotlib-data package.  Currently we
> ship three identical copies of it:
> 
>   $ sha256sum /etc/matplotlibrc
> /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc
> /usr/share/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc
>   097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc

While we do have this, I think the code for search paths never output this.
I am unsure about this config.

> /etc/matplotlibrc
>   097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc
> /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc
>   097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc
> /usr/share/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc

I dropped /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc in the last upload. It wasn't referenced
anywhere in the code, as far as I could see. The commit adding this dates back to 2013, and the install
rule was not changed post that. I believe it was safe to just drop this.

> (these are not symlinks -- and for reference, they're from
> python-matplotlib-data/3.10.7+dfsg1-3)

Yes, I saw that in the last upload. Same template matplotlibrc is installed everywhere.

> As a reminder and/or for mailing list readers: the upstream matplotlib
> documentation _does not_ mention /etc/matplotlibrc -- the Debian
> source package adds a patch that introduces it:
> 
>   https://sources.debian.org/src/matplotlib/3.10.7+dfsg1-4/debian/patches/20_matplotlibrc_path_search_fix.patch

Right.

> I think this means that in practice, some Debian installations may be
> using the /etc/matplotlibrc file to customise matplotlib's
> configuration, so we should be cautious about removing it.
> 
> As a system operator, I'd probably want to know that the file is
> no-longer-used at the same time as a python-matplotlib-data package
> update that stops reading from it.
> 
> In other words: I _wouldn't_ want either of these situations: (the
> file to be removed silently by a package update, despite the library
> still attempting to read from it) OR (the file to continue to exist,
> despite the library no longer reading from it).

If we want to be extra careful, how about a NEWS item for forky that the
conffile will be removed in the next stable release and drop the patch
and also the conffile for duke?

> If we remove the conffile and update the patch to remove
> /etc/matplotlibrc as a config location from the library: would a
> Debian host where the /etc/matplotlibrc file has been customised
> usually emit a warning/note during package update/purge?

update, yes it would. `rm_conffile` would save the file as `conffile.dpkg-bak` and print a note.

The documentation is at: https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/dpkg-dev/deb-conffiles.5.en.html
and code in the question (for warn) is at: https://git.dpkg.org/cgit/dpkg/dpkg.git/tree/src/dpkg-maintscript-helper.sh#n120

purge, I think no.
I tried on my system, and I did not see a warning if I locally modify the conffile (warning unless I missed something basic).
But I am unsure how a warning is relevant here, as the sysadmin is trying to get rid of the package and the conffiles.

Best,
Nilesh

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Thread

Re: Matplotlib 3.10.0 for trixie? Alexandre Detiste <alexandre.detiste@gmail.com> - 2025-10-23 17:50 +0200
  Re: Matplotlib 3.10.0 for trixie? James Addison <jay@jp-hosting.net> - 2025-10-31 17:50 +0100
    Re: Matplotlib 3.10.0 for trixie? Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2026-05-10 11:40 +0200
      Re: Matplotlib 3.10.0 for trixie? Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2026-05-13 20:20 +0200

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