[refpolicy] PyXML requirement for refpolicy

[cpebenito@tresys.com (Christopher J. PeBenito)]

On 11/3/2014 3:14 PM, Nicolas Iooss wrote:
> 2014-10-31 15:21 GMT+01:00 Christopher J. PeBenito:
>> On 10/30/2014 6:05 PM, Nicolas Iooss wrote:
>>> Refpolicy INSTALL file says that PyXML is required for building [1].
>>> However I haven't got this library on my system and things are working
>>> well so I'm wondering what I am missing. A simple "git grep import"
>>> shows "from xml.dom.minidom import parse, parseString" in
>>> support/sedoctool.py [2] but the xml module has been part of Python
>>> since Python 2.0 (according to 2.6 doc [3]) so this is not PyXML.
>>> Moreover PyXML main page says this library is no longer maintained [4].
>>>
>>> Is PyXML still a requirement of refpolicy and if not, is it possible to
>>> remove it from the INSTALL file?
>>
>> I believe you are correct that it can be removed.  These things should
>> work, to verify:
>>
>> * 'make conf' will yield doc/policy.xml, which will validate against
>> doc/policy.dtd. The makefile already validates, so this checks out.
>> * doc/policy.xml should have all of the xml docs from throughout the policy
>> * 'make html' should get all the html interface docs
>>
>> If that all works, then we can update the INSTALL and other
>> documentation to replace PyXML with Python 2.0 in the dependency list.
> 
> As I got a new computer a few days ago with a clean Arch Linux
> installation, I've been able to test things while being sure PyXML has
> never been installed on this system.  Here are my results:
> 
> * "make conf && make" works fine, with python 3.4.2, the latest release
> of SELinux userspace tools & librairies (2.3) and setools 3.3.8.
> 
> * "xmllint --noout --dtdvalid doc/policy.dtd doc/policy.xml" succeeds
> and "doc/policy.xml" seems to be a valid XML when opened in a text
> editor (i.e. it is not almost empty).
> 
> * "make html" produces HTML pages in docs/html and Firefox renders them
> correctly (and the links work fine).  While speaking about
> documentation, there is a small typo in corenet_raw_bind_generic_node
> summary: "genric" is written instead of "generic" [1].
> 
> * "make validate" prints "Success", after 740s.

This wasn't necessary for checking XML, as all it does is link all the
.pp files to make sure there's no dependency issue.

> It should be OK to drop PyXML from the INSTALL and the doc and document
> the supported Python versions.  Python 2.0 might lack some features
> which are used in the support scripts (like "from __future__ import
> print_function"?).  I haven't got this version on my systems but I've
> tested the build with both Python 2.7.8 and 3.4.2 and it succeeded.  As
> Arch Linux is probably not the best distro to establish the lower limit
> of supported version numbers, it probably makes more sense to see what
> Python version Debian, Fedora and Gentoo currently support.

I think Python 2.6 should be a reasonable minimum.  It's the first to
support the print_function import you mention above.

-- 
Chris PeBenito
Tresys Technology, LLC
www.tresys.com | oss.tresys.com