GitLab

Trying to upgrade my sid today, I eventually get to:

sudo apt full-upgrade                                      
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  python-crypto python-yaml
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libpython-stdlib python python-cliapp python-distro-info python-jabberbot
  python-minimal python-potr python-xmpp vmdebootstrap
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libpython2-stdlib python2 python2-minimal
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 9 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

That's because of an intentional change:

• Stop building the python, python-dev, python-dbg, python-doc, python-minimal, libpython-dev, libpython-dbg, libpython-stdlib packages.

Mid-term the real fixes are #15349 and #17031 but none of those is going to happen overnight, and in the meantime those of us who use sid need a working build & test suite environment.

So I propose we:

• add an isobuilder-bullseyesuite to our custom APT repo, ideally with an isotester-bullseye alias
• upload there equivs-generated packages to replace those that are going away in sid, e.g. a python package that merely has Depends: python2 and a version number that workarounds python2's versioned Breaks and Replaces

… so that the packages we do need (python-potr, python-xmpp, vmdebootstrap) remain installable until we've migrated to better supported software.