Dear DDs, I am (basically) upstream for src:xcb-proto and src:libxcb. For random reasons, I looked through the debian bugs against libxcb and stumbled upon #938839 (py2removal for src:xcb-proto) and #936940 (py2removal for src:libxcb). Here are some comments that hopefully turn into patches for the two packages.
The short version of this mail: These two bugs can be tagged py3available (by someone who does not always mess up any interaction with the BTS). The python code in the newest versions of xcb-proto and libxcb should work fine with Python 3. In 2016, I merged some patches coming from someone with a @NetBSD.org mail address that should make everything build with python 3 (and python 3.5 was mentioned specifically). Thus, the following steps should be necessary for the Debian packages: 1. Add a python3-xcbgen package. 2. Make libxcb build with python3. 3. Drop python-xcbgen? I'm not sure on the policy here, but it has no reverse dependencies and the only reverse build dependency is libxcb. This seems simple and "just the standard case". I would provide tested patches for the bugs in question, but I am not quite sure about the inner workings of dh-python. For 1, I tried coming up with a patch for xcb-proto myself, but failed. (--with dh-python3 and a new debian/python3-xcbgen.install and some messing with debian/control, but no python3 paths ended up materialising in the new binary package). All the python code is in xcbgen/* in the source and just has to be installed at the right place. That should be trivially simple for someone who knows the necessary dh and autotools magic. For 2... well, libxcb uses AM_PATH_PYTHON([2.6]) for finding python via autotools, so I guess that export PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3 is all that is necessary for this. I hope this helps & sorry for failing to produce patches myself. Cheers, Uli P.S.: I'm not subscribed to the list. Let's see how well that works out for this mail... -- Sent from my Game Boy.