Hello Debian Python members, I am looking into a bug in a Debian Science package that I maintain and need some information. It is a C++ library with a complicated CMake setup that also produces a Python binding via swig.
Recently a FTBFS bug was filed against the package because apparently it does not select the right Python after the introduction of Python 3.9. The bug report can be found here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972394 The recommendations are to change the build-dep on "python-dev" to "python-all-dev", and I can confirm that this does allow the package to build. (Is this the right thing to do?) However, autopkgtest tests still fail. The commenter in that bug report claims, "the lack of 3.8 modules in the package also explains your problem." However, I do not understand that claim -- wouldn't it be counter-productive to specify which minor version of Python the package depends on? I would need to update this manually when the default switches to Python 3.9. Although the CMake build is quite complicated and therefore I can expect such problems, but I am nonetheless confused why it would select the wrong Python version, as I do specify the Python executable via the command, > -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=$(shell which python3)" Is there a better way to find the path to the default python interpreter? kind regards, Steve
