On 2022-01-30 at 21:07, Russell L. Harris wrote: > On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 08:28:29PM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> Well... according to packages.debian.org, dict-moby-thesaurus only >> exists in oldstable and oldoldstable. So, Debian 9 and 10. >> >> <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dict-moby-thesaurus> shows the >> dates it was removed from unstable and from testing. >> >> <https://tracker.debian.org/news/1161371/removed-10-64-from-unstable/> >> shows that it was removed because: >> >> RoQA; dead upstream (10+ years); python2-only; no extrenal deps; >> extremely low popcon > > Thanks for taking the time to trace out the cause. It truly is a > sad loss. > > I wish I knew enough about Python to know how much work it would > take to make the data base compatible with Python 3 (or whatever > dictionary currently is running on). Meanwhile, it is back to > Roget. Speaking as someone who took a Python 2 codebase (moosic) that was being dropped with the move to Python 3, and updated it to work with Python 3, without having been more than can-read-it-well-enough familiar with Python before that point: It's entirely doable, but the degree of difficulty and amount of work will depend on the specific codebase involved. In my case, I started with the last Debian package version before the removal, imported the source package into git, dropped the debian/ directory because that doesn't belong in the upstream codebase, ran the '2to3' tool (from the package of the same name) against the codebase, committed the result, and started doing "build" / run tests of the updated code (including comparisons back and forth with the untouched Python 2 version of the codebase). Lots of things didn't work at first, but it only took me a day or so to get it working far enough for a few of the program's features to be functional, and another day or two to get the rest into shape. I've since taken over as upstream maintainer, am working to get the package back into Debian (although it's currently low project priority), and have done a bit of work adding features and fixing bugs into the bargain. The details in your case might be significantly different, but I assure you that it *can* be done, it's just a matter of how opaque the codebase is, and how many manual changes need to be made after what the 2to3 conversion tool does. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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