Versioned scripts in Zope packages

[Gediminas Paulauskas]

2011/4/24 Arnaud Fontaine <arnau at debian.org>:
> Hi,
>
> I will upload zconfig and several other zope packages to Debian probably
> tomorrow, based on what you have already uploaded to Ubuntu.
>
> I'm  just wondering  why  you  removed the  versioned  scripts (such  as
> buildout2.6 and  buildout2.7)?  Is  there any reason  not to  have them?
> Because I think it is very convenient and logical to have one script for
> each Python version supported.
>
> Besides of being much more logical  in my opinion (because all the files
> in /usr/bin are supposed to  be called straight away, thus without doing
> "python2.7 /usr/bin/foo",  otherwise that probably means  they should be
> somewhere else  than bin/) and that  other scripts do the  same (such as
> pdb and  2to3), it  is generally easier  for end-users, some  people may
> rely on this behavior and we will probably have versioned scripts anyway
> for Python3.

Python Policy states that "Python scripts ... not depending on a
specific Python version should use python (without a version) as the
interpreter name."

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/ch-python.html#s-interpreter_name
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/ch-programs.html

This supported my wish to NOT have versioned scripts, they are equal
anyway. Especially the ZODB scripts, why do you need a repozo2.6?
There is a database, and there are database maintenance and debug
scripts. Who cares what python version they use? Why force an admin to
choose a version they "want"?

buildout or zope-testrunner -- yes, you may want to use a specific
python version to test with either python version, or if something
does not work with python 2.7 (but that has to be fixed, because 2.7
is the default in Ubuntu 11.04). If it is the case,  you can run
"python2.6 /usr/bin/zope-testrunner". I see no reason why the only
script that a package installs is versioned. Especially in Ubuntu
10.10, where only one python version was supported (2.6).

Another reason is that versioned scripts add dependency on all
supported python versions (https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/761680).
Most users do not need to have two versions of python installed. So
this was a bug.

You forwarded an email that lists even more reasons against versioned
scripts. Unfortunately, zdaemon is the only zope package I have not
fixed in this way :(

> Thanks for your work, it is greatly appreciated!

Thank You!

Sorry I work alone in Ubuntu and have not contribute much back to
Debian. Ubuntu is the primary target for SchoolTool, which is written
in Zope and the only reason I work on Zope packages at all. Now that
Ubuntu 11.04 is out, I may commit my changes to pkg-zope, but feel
free to take them yourself.

--
Gediminas Paulauskas
SchoolTool release manager