* Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-06-02 12:19:38 +0200]:

> His explanation is all but satisfactory. Installing two versions of a
> python package in different paths is always going to cause issues, and
> this workaround is merely working by accident.

Really? I work with packages like this all of the time; there's a
system-wide debian install of the package, for other debian packages
that require it, but then in my development environment in my home
directory I'll often have SVN checkouts and such in my PYTHONPATH for
development purposes. This works fine, and seems to be exactly how
Python's module location system is designed to work (directories earlier
in sys.path can override directories later in sys.path).

> If plugins are really incompatible between versions, the very first
> thing to do is to version the directory containing them.

It's not just about incompatibility, it's about running the wrong
source; even if the plugins from the wrong directory are compatible
enough that they work, you're still picking up the wrong modules, and
running the wrong code.

In any case, this is a design decision taken by upstream; there may be
room to debate the merits of that decision upstream, but I don't see why
we need to break upstream's plugin mechanism in Debian for no reason
other than "we don't like it"; changing every package that uses the
Twisted plugin system to work differently means a) a whole lot of
overhead in making the changes, and b) incompatibility with everything
and everyone else. What benefits are we getting in return for all that
pain?
-- 
mithrandi, i Ainil en-Balandor, a faer Ambar

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