dh_pycentral is a debhelper program that will scan your package, detect
public Python modules and move them in /usr/share/pycentral so that
python-central can byte-compile those for all supported Python versions.
Extensions are kept into the original installation location.
Moving the files to the pycentral location can be disabled by setting
the environment varibale DH_PYCENTRAL to a string containing the
string nomove.
You must have filled the XS-Python-Version header to indicate the
set of python versions that are going to be supported. dh_pycentral
expects the XB-Python-Version for each binary package it is supposed
to work on.
dh_pycentral will also generate substitution variables: the
${python:Provides} variable will contain versioned provides of the package
(if the package's name starts with ``python-''). A python-foo package could
provide ``python2.3-foo'' and ``python2.4-foo'' at the same time. Python
extensions have to provide those whereas it's only option for pure python
modules.
The ${python:Versions} variable should be used to provide the required
XB-Python-Version field listing the python versions supported by the
package.
OPTIONS
module dirs
If your package installs python modules in non-standard directories, you
can make dh_pycentral check those directories by passing their names on the
command line. By default, it will check /usr/lib/$PACKAGE, /usr/share/$PACKAGE, /usr/lib/games/$PACKAGE,
/usr/share/games/$PACKAGE and /usr/lib/python?.?/site-packages.
Note: only /usr/lib/python?.?/site-packages and the
extra names on the command line are searched for binary (.so) modules.
-Vversion
If the .py files your package ships are meant to be used by a specific
pythonX.Y version, you can use this option to specify the desired version,
such as 2.3. Do not use if you ship modules in /usr/lib/site-python.
With the new policy, this option is mostly deprecated. Use the
XS-Python-Field to indicate that you're using a specific python version.
-n, --noscripts
Do not modify postinst/postrm scripts.
-Xitem, --exclude=item
Exclude files that contain ``item'' anywhere in their filename from being
taken into account to generate the python dependency. You may use this
option multiple times to build up a list of things to exclude.