At some point after I first installed Debian (last year), the gimp-python package disappeared from Debian Testing. I already had it, so never noticed...

I just did a clean install of Debian Testing LXQt, installed GIMP, moved over my Resynthesizer-based plugins, and tried to use Heal Selection.

It complained about Python, and I remembered from the previous install that for some reason, gimp-python was not automatically pulled in on Debian, and I had had to install it separately before Heal Selection would work.

So, now I opened up Synaptic and searched for "gimp" and then looked down the list for anything Python-related, (not yet remembering the exact name), and didn't find anything that sounded right. I did a google search to find the exact name, and returned to Synaptic, and IT WAS NOT THERE.

I now vaguely remembered reading something about Debian and Python...

Googling it now, I found: https://bdmpublications.com/debian-ubuntu-remove-python-2-packages/ "Debian and Ubuntu to remove Python 2 packages Python 2 is set to reach its end of life on January 1st 2020, a mere four months away now. As such, Debian and ultimately Ubuntu will be looking to drop the current Python 2 packages in the next release cycle.

Debian 10 ‘Buster’ has recently been released, and will of course still be supporting Python 2 within its build. However, with an eye to Debian 11, codenamed ‘Bullseye’, the team are going to be dropping the legacy Python 2 code and instead focus on adopting Python 3 in the relevant core packages. "
Debian Stable still has it (2.10.8-2), and I can see it depends on Python 2.7: "dep: python
interactive high-level object-oriented language (Python2 version) dep: python-gtk2 (>= 2.8.0)
Python bindings for the GTK+ widget set dep: python2.7
Interactive high-level object-oriented language (version 2.7) "

What if anything is being done to help people who use python plug-ins, and thus need gimp-python?

Should I assume that even if gimp moves to Python 3.x, that the various python plug-ins would have to be updated/re-written to use Python 3.x?

For now, would an app-image contain within itself the gimp-python code that would allow Heal Selection and other python plugins to function?

Update:

I tried to install gimp-python from my previous Debian install, and it failed with dependency issues:

scott@ASUS-Prime-B350M-A-CSM:~$ sudo dpkg -i /home/scott/Downloads/gimp-python_2.10.8-2+b1_amd64.deb Selecting previously unselected package gimp-python. (Reading database ... 331569 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../gimp-python_2.10.8-2+b1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking gimp-python (2.10.8-2+b1) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of gimp-python: gimp-python depends on python:any. gimp-python depends on python-gtk2 (>= 2.8.0); however: Package python-gtk2 is not installed. dpkg: error processing package gimp-python (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: gimp-python

It wants python-gtk2, but... scott@ASUS-Prime-B350M-A-CSM:~$ apt-cache policy python-gtk2 python-gtk2: Installed: (none) Candidate: (none) Version table:

...that is also unavailable.

I then grabbed python-gtk2 from my previous Debian, and tried to install both:

scott@ASUS-Prime-B350M-A-CSM:~$ sudo dpkg -i /home/scott/Downloads/gimp-python_2.10.8-2+b1_amd64.deb /home/scott/Downloads/python-gtk2_2.24.0-6_amd64.deb (Reading database ... 331612 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../gimp-python_2.10.8-2+b1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking gimp-python (2.10.8-2+b1) over (2.10.8-2+b1) ... Selecting previously unselected package python-gtk2. Preparing to unpack .../python-gtk2_2.24.0-6_amd64.deb ... Unpacking python-gtk2 (2.24.0-6) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of gimp-python: gimp-python depends on python:any. dpkg: error processing package gimp-python (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of python-gtk2: python-gtk2 depends on python (<< 2.8); however: Package python is not installed.
python-gtk2 depends on python (>= 2.7); however: Package python is not installed.
python-gtk2 depends on python-numpy (>= 1:1.16.0~rc1); however: Package python-numpy is not installed. python-gtk2 depends on python-numpy-abi9; however: Package python-numpy-abi9 is not installed. python-gtk2 depends on python:any (>= 2.6.6-7~); however: python-gtk2 depends on python-cairo (>= 1.0.2-1.1); however: Package python-cairo is not installed. python-gtk2 depends on python-gobject-2 (>= 2.21.3); however: Package python-gobject-2 is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package python-gtk2 (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: gimp-python
python-gtk2

I note that gimp-python is part of the gimp source package.

Is gimp-python being upgraded to use python 3?