Python Library Cleanups

[Fred Wright]

Resending with the correct subject.

On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Fred Wright via devel <devel at ntpsec.org>:
> > > Plus these are most likely too late for 1.0.  We are in the final
> > > testing phases now.
> >
> > I think requiring users to set PYTHONPATH to run the tools should be
> > considered a show stopper for a 1.0 release.
>
> And I would so regard it if this were ever required on Linux or FreeBSD.
> I have had no report of this.

The documentation used to suggest putting a PYTHONPATH definition in one's
.bashrc.  That should have set off alarm bells.

> > These changes are almost entirely just in the build scripts, with the only
> > actual code changes (Python only) being almost entirely in the error
> > reporting for not finding the libraries.
>
> I will audit them, but dropping this in the day before release doesn't just
> seem like asking for trouble, it seems like screaming WE WANT TO EMBARRASS
> OURSELVES.

Sorry for this being so late, but I spent a lot of time testing the
changes.  And my Ubuntu VM picked a rather inopportune time to start
saying "you can't purge a package, your disk is full". :-)

On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Eric S. Raymond via devel wrote:
> Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net>:
>
> > Should ntpq be able to print its version string without any libraries?
>
> That'd be nice, but one feature of the current organization is that there's
> a version-reporting function all the Python code can share.

Also, the current behavior makes for a nice simple test that the libraries
can be loaded.  There are a few clients that are lacking the -V option, so
that doesn't work for them.  This is probably woth fixing.  And it might
be worth fixing ntploggps to be able to report its version without needing
the GPSD libraries.  None of this is a 1.0 issue, of course.

On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Gary E. Miller via devel wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:15:04 -0700 (PDT)
> Fred Wright via devel <devel at ntpsec.org> wrote:
>
> > If the directory choice on gentoo is inappropriate, take that up with
> > whomever packaged Python for it.
>
> Not Gentoo, the FHS.  And the package I am using is git head.

The point is that the portable way to determine where to install the
libraries is to ask Python via the get_python_lib() function.  Whatever it
returns (as long as you don't supply the 'prefix' argument) is guaranteed
to be in its initial sys.path.  If that location is inappropriate, it's
the fault of whomever configured and built that Python.

Fred Wright
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list
devel at ntpsec.org
http://lists.ntpsec.org/mailman/listinfo/devel