[python-committers] build dependency on the branches on sphinx trunk necessary?

[Matthias Klose]

Guido van Rossum schrieb:
> I'm not sure I understand your request. Is it okay to build docs using
> a version of sphinx that is included in the distro? Is there a
> specific revision that you would like to see rolled back, or do you
> have a specific fix in mind?

the specific change was committed in r68428. I didn't check if reverting this
causes regressions in building the docs.

A safe approach would be to only use build dependencies on a branch which were
released before the first release of the branch. I assume in this case, the
branch should stick with sphinx-0.5 and not rely on newer sphinx versions (or
sphinx dependencies which were released after the python-2.6.0 release).

> I suspect few people here understand the
> (apparently largely political) ins and outs of the rules that guard
> inclusion into Debian -- I certainly don't, and I don't have the time
> to become an expert in them. So rather than trying to explain the
> rules to us, could you make a specific suggestion of something we
> could *do* to fix your problem?

please see the proposals above. I'm not sure about the best approach how to make
backporting to the branch as easy as possible.

  Matthias

> --Guido
> 
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 5:40 AM, Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> the requirement to build the documentation using a sphinx version from the trunk
>> was merged to at least the 2.6 branch. This is clearly not a bug fix. Is it
>> really necessary to rely on a trunk/unreleased version? Would it be possible to
>> revert this change?
>>
>> Background: The Debian distribution requires distribution of files which can be
>> edited in the preferred format, which excludes generated documentation. I can
>> pre-build the 2.6 documentation, and then include it in the so called "contrib"
>> section of the archive, but I would like to see it available in the "main"
>> section. Including a copy of the sphinx trunk in the python package uploaded to
>> the distribution would be a hack around this (it is unlikely that the sphinx
>> trunk version will be available in Debian).
>>
>> For python-2.5, Debian was not able to put the docs in the "main" section,
>> because a build tool with (in the eyes of Debian) "non-free" license was used to
>> build the docs. It is nice that this is fixed now, but for now one reason is
>> exchanged by another one why we cannot move the docs to Debian's "main" section
>> of the archive.