Debsources, python3, and funky file names

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2022-01-25 06:00:08

Back when development started, python3 was very much a real language, but it was hard to adopt because it was not supported by many libraries. So python2 was chosen, meaning print-based debugging was used in lieu of print()-based debugging, and str were bytes, not unicode.

And things were working just fine. One day python2 EOL was announced, with a date far in the future. Far enough to procrastinate for a long time. Combine this with a codebase that is stable enough to not see many commits, and the fact that Debsources is a volunteer-based project that happens at best on week-ends, and you end up with a dormant software and a missed deadline.

But, as dormant as the codebase is, the instance hosted at sources.debian.org is very popular and gets 200k to 500k hits per day. Largely enough to be worth a proper maintenance and a transition to python3.

While transitioning to python3 and juggling left and right with str, bytes and unicode for internal objects, files, database entries and HTTP content, I stumbled upon a bug that has been there since day 1.