[Python-modules-team] Bug#484360: Bug#501207: destar: Fails to run with python2.5

[John Wright]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 08:42:26AM +0300, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> John, hi,
> 
> John Wright wrote:
> > The above problem is actually the same as bug 501207.  However, with
> > that patch applied, I get the following problem starting destar:
> <snip>
> > The attached patch fixes the SyntaxError.
> Thanks a lot for these patches!
> 
> I have absolutely no clue about python and I don't think anyone in the
> team does -- which effectively means that we need all the help we can get.
> 
> So, bear with me if this is a silly question: I was under the impression
> that lenny will be shipped with both python 2.4 and 2.5 and that these
> should be co-installable.

Yes, lenny will have both python2.4 and python2.5.  One workaround, at
least for the compiler.ast.From problem, would be to run destar with
#!/usr/bin/python2.4 instead of #!/usr/bin/python.  But I think it
better to fix the bug rather than try to work around it, if possible.

> Are your fixes backwards compatible? It'd suck to fix this only to have
> a bug report the day after "fails to run with python2.4" :)

I made sure the fix for #501207 was backwards-compatible.  As for the
SyntaxError problem, I'm surprised it ever worked at all.  Function
definitions with optional arguments before required positional arguments
aren't legal in 2.4 either (I'm not sure when/if they ever were).  Maybe
quixote used to generate different actual Python code than it does now
in this case?  Anyway, I'm pretty certain the patch for the SyntaxError
will work with python2.4, but I'll check tomorrow.

-- 
John Wright <jsw at debian.org>