I just tried to install suger related packages my old sid chroot, and
ran into a problem with the upgrade.  The messages make me believe the
python version in the chroot is too old for the source of
python-olpc-datastore.  I got python version 2.5.2-3 installed.  I
suspect this issue might affect other partial upgrades too.  Upgrading
python now to see if the problem go away.

Setting up python-olpc-datastore (0.82.1-2) ...
Compiling /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/backingstore.py ...
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/backingstore.py", line 74
    @staticmethod
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Compiling /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/datastore.py ...
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/datastore.py", line 60
    @dbus.service.method(DS_DBUS_INTERFACE,
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Compiling /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/model.py ...
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/olpc/datastore/model.py", line 76
    @classmethod
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Compiling /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/secore/parsedate.py ...
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/secore/parsedate.py", line 53
    year, month, day = (int(i) for i in mg.group('year', 'month', 'day'))
                                 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

pycentral: pycentral pkginstall: error byte-compiling files (20)
pycentral pkginstall: error byte-compiling files (20)
dpkg: error processing python-olpc-datastore (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of sugar-journal-activity:
 sugar-journal-activity depends on python-olpc-datastore; however:
  Package python-olpc-datastore is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing sugar-journal-activity (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 python-olpc-datastore
 sugar-journal-activity

                           ^^^

It is not your version of python-2.5, it seems, but that you also have
an old python-2.3 installed.

In the past I worked hard on making Sugar run on Python 2.3, even though
2.4 (or 2.5?) was the in the Redhat environment used for upstream
development: I wanted Sugar to run on Etch - and one of the reasons for
that was actually that I wanted it to run on Debian Edu.

It turned out to be too complex back then - mainly due to an SVG library
being packaged not alone but entangled with GNOME librararies, so too
difficult to backport to Etch. Time passed, Debian dropped Python 2.3,
and I stopped trying to make it work there.

...but the packages still claim that they work on Python 2.3. Which _is_
a bug.

So thanks for reporting this. After all.


Concretely, I believe your problems locally will vanish by purging
python-2.3 on your machine.


Kind regards,

  - Jonas