Python packages for PiRogue

Introduction

The goal of this repository is to hold minimal, proof-of-concept-level packaging for some Python packages that are required for the PiRogue. The idea is to avoid depending on running pip3 install in the target environment, and to have a better grip on components that aren't shipped in the Raspbian or Debian archives.

Usually, creating a new package would mean targetting unstable, then backporting the package to stable; here, the immediate goal is moving away from a pip-based installation, so the target is bullseye directly.

Some packages already exist in Debian, but the dependencies expressed initially (by hardcoding versions in pip3 install calls within preinst scripts) might require higher versions.

To bootstrap each package, the py2dsp (PyPI to Debian Source Package) tool is used and its output is massaged into something suitable. Some items are unlikely to get immediate attention, but should be checked if someone wanted to submit one of those packages for inclusion into Debian proper:

• copyright files;
• long description in control files;
• testsuites are sometimes disabled because they seem buggy, or would require a longer list of packages (e.g. mocket for geoip2).

Workflow

Each Python package is pulled with a top-level package/ directory along with the original tarball (e.g. package_version.orig.tar.gz); this makes it easy to build an actual source package that can be turned into binary package(s) by passing it to a “clean build” building tool, like cowbuilder. The target as of April 2022 is the bullseye distribution (Debian 11).

Modifications within each package directory should really be about adding a debian/ directory.

In the end, the resulting binaries can be merged into the third party section of the PiRogue PPA repository.

The PPA might contain Python binaries whose sources aren't tracked in this repository: numpy in the required version is available in experimental but backporting it to bullseye seems non-trivial; its dependencies suggest it should work unmodified with bullseye's python3 interpreter (3.9), so the binary packages might end up getting imported from the Debian archive, rather than built from source.