[gdal-dev] About bug fix / patch release policy for older GDAL versions (setuptools >= 58.0 and GDAL <3.3 compatibility issues)

[snehal waychal]

Dear GDAL Team,

I would like to ask about the patch release policy for the older GDAL
versions. I understand that the GitHub issue is not the place to ask such
questions and hence posting it here. As this is my first post here, please
let me know if I should ask this somewhere else.

On platforms like Debian Bullseye or Ubuntu Focal (current LTS), the GDAL
versions available are 3.2.2 and 3.0.4 respectively. Python bindings
installation for such older releases (<3.3) works as long as the setuptools
version is < 58.0.0. This is due to removal of use_2to3 from newer
setuptools[1]. This compatibility issue was fixed in GDAL v3.3 release[2].
There is a system package python3-gdal but if I understand correctly this
is available for the default python version. So this doesn't work for
official python docker images based on Debian LTS where the python version
is different from system one.

As LTS platforms mentioned above with older GDAL versions are widely used
and there are situations where newer setuptools usage is enforced (e.g. by
modern python package manager tools, see issues in pipenv[3] or poetry[4]),
we face quite some trouble to have GDAL python package working in complex
python environments. Considering the discussion in linked issues, this also
affects GDAL users as well [5].

We could use some inconvenient workarounds but it would be helpful if there
could be a patch release for issues like setuptools compatibility in older
GDAL versions (e.g. 3.2.2) which are commonly used on LTS platforms like
Debian Bullseye. And especially when the effort of backporting fix like [1]
is simple as patch[2] is directly applicable:

```console
git clone https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal.git -b v3.2.2
git cherry-pick 36b6ccdb0e6889743c2ec8b9d8cd7fee3d2df9dd --strategy-option
theirs

# minor some changes and generate sdist for pypi release
python setup.py sdist
```

Given the above considerations, I wonder if there would be a possibility of
having patch releases. I think creating PR won't be much work if this would
be an acceptable policy. I believe this would help quite some people.

Thank you!

[1] https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/issues/4467
[2]
https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/commit/36b6ccdb0e6889743c2ec8b9d8cd7fee3d2df9dd
[3] https://github.com/pypa/pipenv/issues/2364
[4] https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/issues/1584
[5] https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/2781
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