Expected executable "coverage" not present
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| python-coverage (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
The underlying python package "coverage" installs entry points (i.e. executables for the package) that are named "coverage*" (with and without python version as a suffix), but this deb package actively changes these executables to be prefixed by "python3-".
This causes issues when other python packages depend (via pip) on the coverage package, which is detected as present and provided by the system package, but then don't have the expected entry points available.
For the coverage python package, this issue is even more likely to occur, since this is a testing tool which is often invoked automatically through testing procedure definitions of other python package.
Given that the name is fairly generic, providing the expected "coverage" executable via alternatives should be safe and sufficient, e.g. via:
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/coverage coverage /usr/bin/
