Path: csiph.com!4.us.feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!news2.arglkargh.de!news.mixmin.net!aioe.org!bofh.it!news.nic.it!robomod From: Brian May Newsgroups: linux.debian.maint.python Subject: Re: Python package situation Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2021 02:10:01 +0100 Message-ID: References: X-Original-To: debian-python@lists.debian.org X-Mailbox-Line: From debian-python-request@lists.debian.org Wed Feb 17 01:02:22 2021 Old-Return-Path: X-Amavis-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.207 tagged_above=-10000 required=5.3 tests=[BAYES_00=-2, LDO_WHITELIST=-5, RDNS_NONE=0.793] autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Policyd-Weight: using cached result; rate:hard: -3.5 X-Greylist: delayed 582 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at bendel; Wed, 17 Feb 2021 01:02:09 UTC Organization: Debian MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/19009 List-ID: List-URL: List-Archive: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/87y2fn7byv.fsf@canidae.wired.pri Approved: robomod@news.nic.it Lines: 36 Sender: robomod@news.nic.it X-Original-Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2021 11:51:52 +1100 X-Original-Message-ID: <87y2fn7byv.fsf@canidae.wired.pri> X-Original-References: <20210211181234.GA4829@silverpine> <5c9a9365-20b9-c600-638c-6c74a024779a@debian.org> Xref: csiph.com linux.debian.maint.python:13226 Andrey Rahmatullin writes: > On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 09:48:05PM +0100, Martin wrote: > Are you asking about testing or stable? Because for stable the "packages > are either outdated or do not exist" situation is somewhat expected and > testing is not that interesting case, though even in testing we may have a > lot of outdated packages. I believe there are a number of Python packages in Debian unstable that are out of date in respect to latest upstream. e.g. https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=bam%40debian.org&comaint=yes Somebody needs to do the work to update them. But maybe the fact that nobody is doing so, might mean that nobody is using them? The packages which are up-to-date have not been updated by upstream in a long time, and this isn't necessarily a good thing either. I personally found a while back that keeping these packages up-to-date was draining far too much of my time. Time I don't actually have. So I now use Docker+pip for my applications. Plus upgrading system packages to fix dependencies always made me worried I might break something unrelated that I couldn't or wasn't ready to fix. So most of the time I don't use these packages anymore. Yes, the idea of the packages being stable in Debian stable, and hence, won't break anything until you do a release upgrade is a good one. But if you encounter a bug/missing feature in such a package that breaks your application, often the only real alternative is to use the latest version. Often only the latest version is supported by upstream also. -- Brian May