On Thu, 25 Jan 2018 at 17:45:33 +0000, peter green wrote: > > However, in Debian case, I do not know how this can be handled as > > 2 packages cannot hold the same file (even if __init__ is only an empty > > file), and at least one must be present (if you install only one).
The Python jargon is that the "backports" shared by backports.tempfile and backports.weakref is a "namespace package". For Python 2, dh_python2 handles this: python-lazr.restfulclient and python-lazr.uri are an example of cooperating packages that share a namespace package. For Python >= 3.3, the __init__.py is unnecessary due to <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0420/>. > I'm not a python expert but I expect the least-horrible way to do this > would be to ship a package that only contained the __init__. Then have > all the python-backports.* packages depend on it. This is not necessary, and would probably (hopefully?) lead to rejection from the NEW queue. smcv