pyld is python2.7+ only

[Christopher Allan Webber]

We recently included pyld as a dependency.

This breaks python2.6 compatibility. So, this leaves us with two options:

• Drop python2.6 support
• Make the features that require pyld optional.

We should decide on this before 0.7.0 comes out.

[loic_le.ninan]

I ran into this when installing for the first time last week (I am using Debian 6 / Python 2.6.6). My solution was to "debootstrap" a minimal Debian 7 filesystem, with the default Python being 2.7.3, and chroot into that. It works fine, without having to compile a new python or upgrade the existing system.

So dropping python 2.6 should not be a problem :

• Python 2.6 is quite old now (even Debian stable dropped it last year...)
• There are ways to get Python 2.7 working

[Boris Bobrov]

I wonder what parts of pyld don't work on 2.6. Has anybody asked pyld's author about that?

[loic_le.ninan]

Replying to breton:

I wonder what parts of pyld don't work on 2.6.

Python 2.6 was complaining about the lack of the cmp_to_key function (it was introduced in 2.7).

Has anybody asked pyld's author about that?

Well... maybe ? Because according to recent history on github, this was fixed a few days ago in versions >= 0.5.2 by defining a custom cmp_to_key function in case it is not already there.

I just tried a quick install from 2.6 and the Pyld installation went fine.

(1 test failed though, so I will try to reproduce that in a clean environment and with the latest code when I find time)

[loic_le.ninan]

After trying a fresh install, the Pyld issue seems to be resolved. However setup.py ends with errors and one test is failing on my system. See attached file for trace and more.

[Jessica Tallon]

So the reason that in python 2.6 fails the excinfo.errisinstance(TypeError) fails is because the excinfo.errisinstance call is doing an isinstance call on the excinfo.value. In python 2.6 excinfo.value is a string value where as in python 2.7 excinfo is a instance of TypeError. This seems to be a bug with either the "pytest" or "py" library, not sure which at this point.

A way round this would be to do something like:

assert excinfo.type == TypeError

This would work across both. This is however not a pyld issue but actually just becoming a python 2.6 tests are broken.

[Christopher Allan Webber]

So in that case, can we close out this ticket? "python2.6 working except kinda for tests" is okay-ish.

I wonder if that's a bug upstream and if it should be filed though. The ​pytest site claims python2.5+ compatibility...

[Jessica Tallon]

Yes this looks like it runs fine besides the tests.