Hoping to maintain python26 in EPEL5

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 9:31 AM, David Malcolm <dmalcolm at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 08:43 +0100, Steve Traylen wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 2:06 AM, Kevin Fenzi <kevin at tummy.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:40:05 -0500
>> > David Malcolm <dmalcolm at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I'm interested in maintaining a build of python 2.6 for EPEL5,
>> >> parallel-installable with the system "python" (2.4 in EL5, which I
>> >> comaintain within RHEL).
>> >
>> > ...snip...
>> >
>> >> Would people find this useful to have in EPEL5?
>> >
>> > I personally would. We have several clients here that use a home grown
>> > spec/rpm for this, and it would be great to have something like this in
>> > the community. ;)
>> Agreed.
>> > Whats the stance on modules for this python?
>> > Similar to what we do for python3 in fedora? or forbidden?
>>
>> Certainly there is a follow up need for modules for this to be useful
>> to the community. So copying python3 stance in Fedora makes sense.
>
> Re modules: very good point.
>
> It's non-trivial to share modules directly between different minor
> versions of python [1] - so it's simplest and safest to package up the
> modules as "python26-foo" RPMs, rather than risk breaking the "system"
> python stack.
>
>
> What modules would people most want/need?
>
> The ones that immediately spring to my mind are:
>
>  - a version of setuptools, since this needed by many builds; I would
> choose the Distribute fork of setuptools, so probably I'd do a
> python26-distribute-0.6.10.el5
>
>  - python26-nose.el5 (for tests, so that %check sections within builds
> can be more robust)
>
>  - postgres and mysql connectivity, for the versions of those dbs
> within EL5
>
> Are my instincts on the above correct; are those the ones that would be
> most needed?

I would expect that as soon as the dam breaks.. lots of modules would
be needed. The best thing here is to make it scalable with a howto on
"make your python package be python26-xxx compatible"




-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning