Packaging rules for an arch-independent GEdit plugin

Howdy all,

I am attempting to package a GEdit plugin [0], written in
architecture-independent Python.

The build dependencies are all architecture-independent, and as far as I
can tell the build and installation process is architecture-independent.

The upstream install script consists essentially of copying some files
to ‘/usr/lib/gedit/plugins/’.

When I do this in the Debian package, though, the resulting plug-in
fails to load because it can't find ‘gi.repository.Gedit’.

      File "/usr/lib/gedit/plugins/editorconfig_gedit3.py", line 1, in
      <module>
        from editorconfig_plugin.gedit3 import *
      File "/usr/lib/gedit/plugins/editorconfig_plugin/gedit3.py", line
      26, in <module>
        from gi.repository import GObject, Gedit
      File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gi/importer.py", line 127, in
      find_module
        'introspection typelib not found' % namespace)
    ImportError: cannot import name Gedit, introspection typelib not
      found

Every other GEdit plug-in packaged in Debian, even the pure Python ones,
appears to be installed to an architecture-specific location, not
‘/usr/lib/gedit/plugins/’. Why the difference? Is this incorrect?

An example of this is the GEdit plugin from the ‘rabbitvcs’ source
package. Apparently it relies on ‘dh_install’, to simply install the
plugin files directly to ‘/usr/lib/gedit/plugins/’.

How should a third-party GEdit plugin, architecture-independent Python
code, be packaged for Debian so that it will work correctly in GEdit?

What do I need to do in the packaging to convince Gedit to see the
files? What Debhelper (or other) tools are there in Debian to help make
this simple?


[0] ‘editorconfig-gedit’ <URL:bugs.debian.org/889696>.