In line with the Mass Python 2 Package Removal [0], the following (sub)packages of python-mapnik were marked for removal: * python2-mapnik According to our query, those (sub)packages only provide a Python 2 importable module. If this is not true, please tell us why, so we can fix our query. Please remove them from your package. As said in the change document, if there is no objection in a week, we will remove the package(s) as soon as we get to it. This change might not match your packaging style, so we'd prefer if you did the change. If you need more time, please let us know here. We hope this doesn't come to you as a surprise. If you want to know our motivation for this, please read the change document [0]. [0] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Mass_Python_2_Package_Removal
Should I be doing something to obsolete the python2 package? The change seems to say no but surely that means people will have dozens of python2 packages installed that aren't being upgraded any more and will eventually start to break updates?
The current answer is "no". See https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/python-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/TX5OLJIXJ5KHFRQXCF6M7J2XWRMYFXUY/ for a discussion about this.
The problem is that python-mapnik is linked to boost so the next time boost updates anybody with python2-mapnik installed is going to find they can't update boost or anything that uses boost. There are a number of other libraries it links to as well that could cause similar effects but boost is probably the one that changes soname most often. I'm not sure what happens these days when doing an update to a new release using official technologies as I always do it with dnf - does it refuse to update? or just update and leave python2-mapnik broken?
I filed Bug #1630222 for the obsoleting and quoted the reason there.