On Sat, 2018-08-04 at 22:25 +0200, Miro Hrončok wrote: > Hi, > > an interesting discussion came up in the Python Maint team recently, > about not shipping python3-debug and python2-debug. > > On the Chesterton's fence principle [0], I'd would like to know why > are > we building and shipping them before we have a discussion about > their > removal to save build time and remove packaging cruft. > > Anyone has an idea? Those packages are meant to debug Python, yet > all > people I know who do that, build they own Python for that purpose > (often > from the master branch). > > I tracked down the introduction of the python-debug package in this > commit [1] by David Malcolm (CCed) @ 8 years ago, added in Fedora 14 > shortly before upgrade to 2.7. Yet the commit message lacks > rationale. > > [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence > [1] > https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/python/c/f020abd35954981b383884105 > dad425ba9c6637a
Python's --with-pydebug adds lots of checking that's useful when developing *extension modules*, as well as debugging Python itself. This checking breaks ABI (due to adding nodes for a doubly-linked list of all objects into the base PyObject struct). The reason I added these packages to Fedora was to make Fedora a more attractive OS for people developing Python extension modules (given that Debian did, and we didn't, at the time). If you're trying to track down a reference leak in some module, having to build your own Python feels like an unnecessary hurdle (IMHO). FWIW, I use it myself in gcc-python-plugin, which is built 4 times (for Python 2 vs 3, optimized vs debug). Dave _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/OLAMAEBXNUXXOHSNSV6562OADEK4EM27/
