[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#876439: Continue providing Python 2 libraries

Balasankar C balasankarc at autistici.org
Wed Oct 4 06:41:00 UTC 2017


Latest upload of fonttools broke many reverse build-dependencies. Please 
don't drop Python 2 support without a prior warning or proper migration 
plan/period.

According to fonttools upstream README[0], fonttools will work with 
Python 2.7, 3.4 or later. With 3.5.1-2 of fonttools package in Debian, 
libraries are no longer provided for Python 2, hence breaking many of 
its reverse dependencies (All fonts-smc-* packages, which I maintain, 
are FTBFS as of now). Because the other main font related package, 
fontforge, doesn't provide Python 3 libraries yet, it is impossible to 
port those reverse dependencies to Python 3 yet.

I know we are aiming for Python-3-only in Buster as Python 2 is EOL in 
2020, but until majority of the packages port to Python 3, it would be 
better to provide both Python 2 and 3 bindings. As far as fonttools is 
concerned, it will work with Python 2 and hence it won't be an issue.

I strongly recommend to consider providing packages for Python 2 also, 
at least for Buster.

[0] 
https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/blob/master/README.rst#installation

Regards
Balasankar C



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