Re: [PR PATCH] [Closed]: New package: python3.11 3.11.6

[ahesford <ahesford@users.noreply.github.com>]

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There's a closed pull request on the void-packages repository

New package: python3.11 3.11.6
https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/46631

Description:
Python minor upgrades are all-or-nothing commitments to Void. Working through revbumps and runtime tests uncover a lot of incompatibilities, but runtime testing is limited to whatever testers happen to use. We are all familiar with the post-upgrade press to fix the tens of broken packages that shake out once the broader community gets the packages.

Even worse, large and sometimes important projects (`firefox`, `chromium` and `electron*`) use Python for their build processes and tend to slip past the upgrade testing procedure. These packages generally FTBFS and can require extensive patching of a litany of vendored Python packages. This is a painful process but, if we waited for upstream fixes for everything, we might lag behind several Python minor cycles. (Firefox *still* requires patching for Python 3.11.)

To make this upgrade easier in the future, I propose to provide the `python3-legacy` package, which will lag behind `python3` by at least one minor version. This package (and its `-devel` subpackage) provide us a few nice advantages:
1. It is sufficient to bootstrap a virtual environment. Users that have packages fundamentally incompatible with new Python can install `python3-legacy` and create an older venv that will provide some consistency.
2. It can live alongside the system `python3`, so users that have existing virtual environments which link against the prior Python libraries can be kept functional by installing `python3-legacy`. (Right now, any existing venvs will break on upgrade because the requisite shared library will be removed.)
3. Our `firefox`, `electron19` and `electron24` packages can use the legacy version for builds, so we avoid breaking these major packages without being forced to patch them. (I have started builds of `electron*` and watched them continue through ~7k files so far, and I've watched `firefox` for the first several minutes. I'll need to actually run through the complete builds to be sure.)

Note that `python3-legacy` is NOT intended to be an alternative to the system Python. It is a minimal installation ONLY and its sole purpose for end users is to create virtual environments. We should NEVER allow any package in the repository to provide files in the `site-packages` tree for this version or link against its `libpython`. (To enforce this, I am deliberately leaving `python3-legacy` out of `common/shlibs`.) Any future upgrade of `python3` must still ensure that *every* Python package at least installes in the new `$py3_sitelib`.

I've left `idle` out of this package but kept `tkinter` built in, although we can drop `tkinter` or add `idle` if others think there is merit in doing so.

#### Testing the changes
- I tested the changes in this PR: **IN PROCESS**

[ci skip]

cc: @void-linux/pkg-committers