[Mesa-dev] glretrace

[José Fonseca]

On Mon, 2010-12-06 at 23:27 -0800, tom fogal wrote:
> Jose Fonseca <jfonseca at vmware.com> writes:
> > I can remove python2.6 dependency as you suggest, but although this
> > new string formatting method is seldom used it actually makes the
> > code much more readable and I was hoping to spread its use, so I'd
> > like you to try one thing first before giving it up:
> 
> I agree that it's a *lot* prettier than the old-style % (a) formatters!
> 
> > I don't know which Debian release you have, but Debian has been
> > shipping a python2.6 for a long time.
> 
> Only in unstable && testing.  Stable is still running 2.5:
> 
>   http://packages.debian.org/stable/python/python

Ah. I Debian a lot, but I always use unstable (which has 2.6 for a long
time) and somehow thought there was a stable release more recently.
Apparently not. 

> > If you install it and pull the latest apitrace code from git [. .
> > .] then it should pickup the /usr/bin/python2.6 interpreter binary
> > instead of the /usr/bin/python, therefore not failing.
> 
> I don't have a /usr/bin/python2.6, as you might guess from the above.
> 
> > Does this work for you? You may need to remove the CMakeCache.txt
> > file first.
> 
> Nah, no 2.6 so of course it can't find it.  I was surprised that the
> aforementioned CMake macro didn't cause an error to pop up though; I
> would've expected configuration to fail because my python isn't up to
> snuff, but it doesn't appear to notice.
> 
> This was really a question of "is it worth it to support 2.5?"  I can
> say that it looks like it will be a moot issue for Debian "soon":
> 
>   http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20101116b
> 
> I don't know about other distros... but I do know that Debian's been
> far too long without a stable =(. So maybe the solution here is just,
> "use a system with a python from the last couple years".

If you're comfortable upgrading your development machine to squeeze then
that would be super. I suppose there are many other reasons to upgrade
beyond python.

There are less disruptive alternatives to upgrade like chroots.
Apparently it is really straightforward to get a squeeze chroot [1]

Jose

[1]  http://www.codelain.com/forum/index.php?topic=11548.0