| DH_PYTHON2(1) | DH_PYTHON2(1) |
dh_python2 - calculates Python dependencies, adds maintainer scripts to byte compile files, etc.
In order to support more than one Python version in the same binary package, dh_python2 (unlike dh_pycentral and dh_pysupport) creates symlinks to all supported Python versions at build time. It means binNMU (or sourceful upload in case of architecture independent packages) is required once a list of supported Python version is changed. It's faster and more robust than its competitors, though.
dh_python2 tries to translate Python dependencies from requires.txt file to Debian dependencies. Use debian/pydist-overrides or --no-guessing-deps option to override it if the guess is incorrect. If you want dh_python2 to generate more strict dependencies (f.e. to avoid ABI problems) create debian/python-foo.pydist file. See /usr/share/doc/python-doc/README.PyDist (provided by python-doc package) for more information. If the pydist file contains PEP386 flag or set of (uscan like) rules, dh_python2 will make the dependency versioned (version requirements are ignored by default).
dh_python2 parses Egg's namespace_packages.txt files (in addition to --namespace command line argument(s)) and drops empty __init__.py files from binary package. pycompile will regenerate them at install time and pyclean will remove them at uninstall time (if they're no longer used in installed packages). It's still a good idea to provide __init__.py file in one of binary packages (even if all other packages use this feature).
/usr/share/foo, /usr/share/games/foo, /usr/lib/foo and /usr/lib/games/foo private directories are scanned for Python files by default (where foo is binary package name). If your package is shipping Python files in some other directory, add another dh_python2 call in debian/rules with directory name as an argument - you can use different set of options in this call. If you need to change options (f.e. a list of supported Python versions) for a private directory that is checked by default, invoke dh_python2 with --skip-private option and add another call with a path to this directory and new options.
In binary packages which name ends with -dbg, all files in /usr/lib/python2.X/{site,dist}-packages/ directory that have extensions different than so or h are removed by default. Use --no-dbg-cleaning option to disable this feature.
Files listed in debian/pkg.pyinstall file will be installed as public modules for all requested Python versions (dh_install doesn't know about python's site- vs. dist-packages issue).
Syntax: path/to/file [VERSION_RANGE] [NAMESPACE]
debian directory is automatically removed from the path, so you can place your files in debian/ directory and install them from this location (if you want to install them in "debian" namespace, set NAMESPACE to debian). If NAMESPACE is set, all listed files will be installed in .../dist-packages/NAMESPACE/ directory.
If you want to remove some files installed by build system (from all supported Python versions or only from a subset of these versions), add them to debian/pkg.pyremove file.
If you want to override system's list of supported Python versions or the default one (f.e. to build a package that includes symlinks for older version of Python or compile .py files only for given interpreter version), you can do that via DEBPYTHON_SUPPORTED and/or DEBPYTHON_DEFAULT env. variables.
Example: 2.5,2.7 limits the list of supported Python versions to Python 2.5 and Python 2.7.
Piotr Ożarowski, 2012-2013