please consider building a python-cffi-runtime package

[Matthias Klose]

Reading https://caremad.io/2014/11/distributing-a-cffi-project/
it is pointed out that the module can build bindings on the fly during runtime,
not just during build time for a package. Now maybe not many packagers will
forget to include an extension in a package, but it looks a bit odd, that I need
to install the python-pycparser package (and probably a compiler package) just
to be able to run an extension built using cffi. Please can we split the package
into two components such that a package usually only depends on a
python-cffi-runtime package, and keeping the build-depends on python-cffi?
dh-python can help translating these dependencies as it does for
python-pkg-resources and python-setuptools.

I shortly chatted with glyph about this idea, and at least he didn't say no
during this chat. For now that could be implemented with a python-cffi-runtime
package holding all the files without the python-pycparser dependency and a
python-cffi package depending on python-cffi-runtime and python-pycparser. Maybe
some files could be moved to python-cffi.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package python-cffi - 1.1.2-1ubuntu1

---------------
python-cffi (1.1.2-1ubuntu1) wily; urgency=medium

  * Merge from Debian unstable. Remaining changes:
    - Drop the build dependency on python-virtualenv (universe), it is an
      optional test.

python-cffi (1.1.2-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release.
  * Update clean rule for test-suite reorg.
  * Patch: Correctly locate py2.7 debug build extensions.
  * Remove package data from -dbg packages.
  * Install upstream's new shiny changelog as a changelog.
  * Drop now-obsolete XS-Testsuite field.
  * Update autopkgtests, for test-suite reorg. Ignore test_parse_c_type.py.
  * Split the cffi_backend module into python-cffi-backend (and similarly for
    Python 3). (Closes: #782275, LP: #1442369)

python-cffi (0.9.2-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Upload to unstable, now that jessie has released.

 -- Stefano Rivera <email address hidden> Sun, 05 Jul 2015 21:02:26 -0700