mgorny-nyan (he) :autism:🙀🚂🐧 on Nostr: So there's a certain #Python package A that's become pretty much abandoned, and then ...

So there's a certain #Python package A that's become pretty much abandoned, and then forked as B. It's using a separate import name now — but the API (modulo the different import name) is the same, and there are no changes that would be significant to #Gentoo users. There's a lot of packages that depend on A right now, and only one on B. On top of that, the maintainer of B seems to pretty much uninterested, beyond keeping the project working for their own needs. What should we do?

Should we just package both for the time being, and effectively have users install two copies of pretty much the same thing? If so, should we encourage other projects to switch to B? Should we start patching Gentoo packages to use B, and effectively be able to remove A? And if we do — what if A is eventually revived (either by its current maintainers, or transferred to a new maintainer)?

Or should try to package B to replace A instead? Then we'd also have to patch revdeps of B to use depend on A again, even though they're really going to be getting patched B.

Or should we just patch that one revdep of B to use plain A instead, and start worrying again when more packages start using B, or it becomes truly incompatible with A?

#packaging #PyPI