On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:00 PM, Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs(a)math.uh.edu> wrote:
One annoying difference between packaging for Fedora and EPEL7 (and
probably older) is the fact that Python packages in Fedora are required
to provide "python2-foo" whereas many EL7 packages don't. This leads to
ifdefs and unpleasantness, and kind of complicates our ability to hide
some details behind macros.
The easiest thing to do if you want a single spec file for EPEL7 and
Fedora is to Requires: python-foo rather than python2-foo. The
packaging guidelines say that the python2 version of the module should
provide both python-foo and python2-foo (one of those being the
package name and the other a virtual provide)
As I see it, the easiest way to hide this (besides RH maintainers
updating those packages with the extra Provides:) is to add a bunch of
empty packages named "python2-foo" which have nothing but a dependency
on "python-foo".
Adding extra packages has the detriment of increasing the metadata
size that has to be downloaded when depsolving.
Even just getting python2-setuptools in would eliminate a lot of cruft.
There are, I believe, 166 packages which might need this, though we
don't have to add them all at once if that makes things more palatable.
166 packages might not be so bad... Or as you say, just doing a few
high value ones like python2-setuptools might be the best of both
worlds, providing compatibility for the most common cases but not
adding significantly to the metadata.
-Toshio