Hoping to maintain python26 in EPEL5

[David Malcolm]

On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 17:51 -0700, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> 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"

FWIW, I've been working this weekend on a very different way of
packaging Python modules that may better support building out parallel
multiple stacks in RPM form.

I just posted details to the Fedora Python SIG list here:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/python-devel/2010-March/000213.html

Assuming I can get it working (it's still an experiment), it may scale
up nicely for a future day when perhaps we want to add e.g. python27,
python31, python32, etc.

Early days, though.

Dave