I am trying to package my Python software with stdeb:
python setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command bdist_deb
which works fine.
Unfortunately, stdeb adds the variable ${python:Depends} to the debian/control file. This placeholder is automatically processed by dh_python2 from debhelper and gets replaced by a string containing multiple Python versions, e.g.: "python2.7, python (>= 2.7.1-0ubuntu2), python (<< 2.8)".
How can I get rid of these automatically added Python versions or how can I override ${python:Depends}?
Note: The actual problem is the python dependency. The target system provides the package python2.7 with version 2.7.3, but python is still at 2.6.6.
What you actually need to do instead is to add something like X-Python-Version: >= 2.6 to source package in debian/control and to add python-all or python-all-dev to Build-Depends. This will work if you're building for the right suite where python-all depends on both python2.6 and python2.7. It is a good idea to use pbuilder in order to build for target system especially if it is different from your development environment.
Please do not override ${python:Depends} -- it is wrong and will do no good.