python-empy for raring/Python3

[Barry Warsaw]

Hi Dirk!  First, thanks very much for your work on porting empy to Python 3,
and your interest in making this available in Ubuntu.

On Feb 06, 2013, at 11:06 AM, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:

>Is this package part of ubuntu already? What is the name of the source
>package?

% apt-cache search empy
python-empy - A templating system for Python
python-empy-doc - Documentation for python-empy

% rmadison -u debian empy
 empy | 3.3-6 | squeeze | source
 empy | 3.3-6 | wheezy  | source
 empy | 3.3-6 | sid     | source

% rmadison empy
      empy |      3.3-6 | hardy/universe | source
      empy | 3.3-6ubuntu1 | lucid/universe | source
      empy | 3.3-6ubuntu1 | oneiric/universe | source
      empy | 3.3-6ubuntu2 | precise/universe | source
      empy | 3.3-6ubuntu2 | quantal/universe | source
      empy | 3.3-6ubuntu2 | raring/universe | source

>Where is the original upstream?

http://www.alcyone.com/software/empy/

According to the release history on that page, the current available version
3.3 was released in 2003.

>Can you continue maintain this package and upload it into cheeseshop?

It's registered, but not distributed from the Cheeseshop:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/EmPy/3.3

On Feb 05, 2013, at 04:34 PM, Dirk Thomas wrote:

>We are using the Python template engine empy for a big open source project
>(http://ros.org).  Since raring will ship with Python3 we would like to use
>empy with it - without falling back to an older Python version.  Sadly the
>upstream source seems to not maintain that code anymore - I have sent an
>email to the authors but never heard back from them.

In the few cases where I've run across such abandonware (e.g. oauth) we've
tried to find suitable replacements that *are* being actively maintained
(e.g. oauthlib).

How long ago did you send that email to the authors?

Have you tried to reach out to any of the folks in the Acknowledgments section
of the home page?  (There are no email addresses there, but at least two of
the names look familiar to me.)

Have you tried to reach out to the Debian maintainer of the package:

% chdist apt-cache sid show python-empy | grep -i maintainer
Maintainer: Ana Beatriz Guerrero Lopez <ana at debian.org>

>Therefore I spent some time making empy work with Python3 (while still
>working with Python2).  The changes can be found in my GitHub repository
>https://github.com/dirk-thomas/empy I am not sure about the common process
>for that but it would be great if the maintainer of the Ubuntu package would
>consider integrating these.

Since upstream appears abandoned, and the code is LGPL'd, probably the best
long term strategy is to make an official fork and become the new upstream for
the fork.  You should probably name the fork something different, but perhaps
evocative of the original, and of course give due credit to the original.
Best if you can give some long-termish commitment to maintaining the upstream
fork, or build a community of folks to help keep it maintained.  We don't want
*two* such abandoned packages floating around. ;)

Once you've done that, you should create a new entry in PyPI for your fork, at
which point we could help get the new package into Debian and Ubuntu.  Myself,
possibly Ana, and I'm sure lots of others would be willing to help with those
steps.

Cheers,
-Barry