syck-python / request to orphan / wanting to replace with pyyaml.org's YAML stuff

[Michael DeHaan]

Bugzilla 189281 references the YAML parser for Python in FC-extras as 
being broken.  The bug report went to oliver at linux-kernel.at on 4/18 and 
I've emailed him on 4/28 inquiring about the 4/18 bug report and 
volunteering to help.   No replies yet on either account, I'm assuming 
long vacations and such are possible, such things are understandable and 
ok.   Anyhow, I'd like to get the YAML situation fixed in the meantime 
-- seeing what was originally uploaded as syck-python never worked 
anyway, and couldn't have passed any unit tests that might have existed 
for it -- and as I'll make for a case below -- probably shouldn't be the 
preferred way to parse YAML in Python :)

Essentially fixing the bugzilla problem would require that upstream syck 
be fixed (to enable the dump function) and the downstream changes 
incorporated into FC-extras, *OR* that instead an alternate version of 
YAML support be added and the existing module be removed.  I am 
advocating the latter approach.

The Python community has apparently seen that the syck bindings that 
ship with syck (current=0.55) are broken, so they've come up with a 
version of syck-python that is 0.61 (http://pyyaml.org) on their own .   
They are also working on a Python Yaml 3000 replacement library, that is 
apparently also a good candidate.

My suggestion is that syck-python be orphaned due to the fact that (1) 
it's broken since it can't serialize anything at all (no dump function), 
and (2) syck isn't incredibly robust.   Given this, I'm planning on 
packaging a "python-yaml" for extras using the Python-YAML 3000 or 
Python-Syck codebase here, which has syck at 0.61.   We can then pull 
python-syck out of the repository.   Yes, I'm signing up to do this, 
assuming we can orphan the broken package to reduce confusion.

Any objections to orphaning the dead-end package in favor of a working 
replacement, please speak up :)

--Michael DeHaan

References:
http://pyyaml.org/
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189281
http://whytheluckystiff.net/syck/