[Reportbug-maint] Python API to Access Debian BTS - python-btsutils vs python-debianbts

[Bastian Venthur]

Hi all,

Sandro Tosi wrote:
> Hi Bastian,
> some time ago you contacted us (reportbug maintainers) and first of
> all I want to apologize for this late reply ;)

No problem.

> I noticed you're working a lot on reportbug-ng and what I want to
> discuss here is the way to communicate with Debian BTS from a python
> program (something even us are planning[1] to do in a standard way).
> 
> You extracted the code to query BTS and forged a new package,
> python-debianbts, but (there's always a "but" :) ) there already
> exists a package that does it: python-btsutils. Here the rdepends of
> both:
> 
> python-btsutils
>    debian-bts-applet
>    bug-triage
> python-debianbts
>    reportbug-ng

I've also noticed python-btsutils and had a quick view on the code if I
could use it instead of my own stuff. I don't know anymore why I found
it wasn't quite what I needed (other features, or other return values)
but eventually I decided it would be much easier to extract my own stuff
to a separate lib.

> Ok, there is not much difference, but I think Debian should have just
> one single python API package to access BTS and for this situation
> maybe concentrate on python-btsutils, that exists since more time and
> has additional capabilities.

Ah, now I remember that I also feared the package was (about to become)
unmaintained, looking at the last upload date and the popcon value, I
wasn't sure if I can really rely on this package.

> What do you think about it? Does it seem reasonable to you to "merge"
> python-debianbts into python-btsutils (in CC its maintainers, so we
> can hear their thinking)?

The idea is reasonable, I think reportbug and rng should share the same
stuff under the hood. The question is how to achieve that. If we merge
the libs, we need to define a stable API which all of us can rely on and
the lib has to implement that. I need at least some kind of interface I
can rely on to query the BTS via SOAP.


Cheers,

Bastian

-- 
Bastian Venthur                                      http://venthur.de
Debian Developer                                 venthur at debian org