Python 2.x on Debian stable

[Rob Tillotson]

carlf at panix.com (Carl Fink) writes:
> Not directly, but the preinstall and postinstall scripts in the
> archives are (I've read) Python scripts.

While I would love to confirm this, I'm sad to report that it is not
true.  In fact, nearly all of the scripts found in Debian packages are
shell scripts, with a few exceptions in that other 'P' language.

Debian policy allows the "scripts" to be anything executable, but to
my knowledge nobody has done control scripts for their packages in
Python yet.  (I haven't examined every package, of course, but I can't
find any examples on my own systems, even among packages directly
related to Python.)  I suspect it would probably be met with
skepticism, since it seems fairly unlikely that the same tasks could
not be accomplished in a shell script, or at least in Perl (which is
part of the base system and considered "essential").

As far as I know, neither apt nor dpkg use Python in any way.  Until
recently Python wasn't even of 'standard' priority... you certainly
won't break anything important by installing a different version.

--Rob