[Ubuntu] MapServer Python MapScript and Wheels/Ubuntu Packages

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 9/21/18 9:22 AM, Seth G wrote:
> By "use of wheels" I meant is it possible they can be used as the source of all files required for the installation e.g. the binaries would go to /lib and the examples and tests to /share. 

The python-mapscript package is built from the mapserver source package,
not from the source dist on PyPI. Using the latter would make it much
easier to build mapscript packages for all supported Python version in
Debian. But then we risk that MapServer is updated before the Python
bindings are, causing the Python binding to lag behind the other binding
that are built from the mapserver source package.

> I can see how builds for every version of Python3 would be a pain. 
> Looking at the shapely package at https://packages.ubuntu.com/en/bionic/python3-shapely - it contains binaries for just Python 3.6. Would limiting the Python version be possible on a repository such as ubuntugis-unstable? 

Shapely is not a good example. It's just a Python module, not a SWIG
generated binding part of a larger project like MapServer.

> Apologies if the questions are fairly basic, but Linux distributions are new to me. Would https://wiki.debian.org/Python/LibraryStyleGuide be the best place to start reading? I'll also give manylinux another try. 

The Python packages on wiki.d.o are mostly applicable to pure Python
modules, not so much to SWIG generated bindings for C libraries.

If there is sufficient demand for a python3-mapscript package I willing
to look at updating the mapserver source package to also build that. But
as I'm not a fan of having to rebuild mapserver for multiple language
versions, I'm not going to do that without sufficient user demand.

Kind Regards,

Bas