[Distutils] First steps with distutils...

[Greg Ward]

On 02 September 2000, M.-A. Lemburg said:
> I've also posted this to Greg directly, but on second
> thought I think it might be worthwhile getting some feedback from
> distutilers as well:

Then I'll reply publicly too; seems more useful that way.

> * distutils doesn't seem to like diretory names in MANIFEST

Correct.  MANIFEST is a simple list of files, one per line.  If you want
to include whole directories, you should write a MANIFEST.in file.
Eg. here is the Distutils' MANIFEST.in; I have (right now) 536 files in
my Distutils working tree, and this MANIFEST.in whittles it down to the
89 files you see in the 0.9.2 source tarball:

  include *.txt TODO
  include MANIFEST.in
  recursive-include examples *.txt *.py
  prune examples/sample*/build
  include doc/dist/*.tex doc/inst/*.tex
  graft misc
  exclude misc/*.zip
  global-exclude *~

The docs for MANIFEST.in are sketchy right now; see

  http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/doc/dist/sdist-cmd.html

for a start.

> * the setup.py file itself is not included in the source
>   distribution per default (why not ?)

It should be if you have a MANIFEST.in file.

One current weakness is that the "sdist" command isn't very smart in the 
absence of a MANIFEST.in file.  I always seem to notice this in the
final hours up to a release, which is not the time or place for major
surgery to fix this.  Sigh.

> * bdist_wininst wants zlib but the installer has a note that
>   it is not using it anymore

Thomas, is this true?

> * bdist_wininst fails with a setup.py file which does not
>   define long_description

I thought that was fixed in 0.9.2 -- !@&%@!#&!@#&%!

> * bdist_rpm fails with an error in the rpm command (the source
>   rpm is built, but it fails to build to the binary rpm for
>   some reason -- it says, that it can't find the file ??);
>   do I need some new rpm release for this to work ?

bdist_rpm requires RPM 3.0, which all current RPM-based Linux
distributions use (AFAIK).  It does *not* work on Red Hat 5.x, which is
what finally prompted me to upgrade to 6.2.  ;-)

Can you show the exact output when you run "setup.py bdist_rpm"?

> * the bdist commands don't compile the .py files into .pyo
>   but this is needed in order to use them with python -O

Yeah, known problem.  How big do you want your RPM to be again?  ;-(

> * bdist (the dumb version) defaults to creating a tar.gz
>   archive which is relative to / -- it shouldn't use the
>   usr/local/ prefix to make the installation relocateable
>   (e.g. to install under /usr, /opt, /opt/local, etc.)

There's no one right way to do this; I've tried them both, and they're
both wrong.  Originally, bdist_dumb created an archive relative to
<prefix> -- relocatable, but it didn't work if prefix != exec-prefix.
(I can't remember if it bombed or created a bogus archive, but the
bottom line is it didn't work.)  Now it creates an archive relative to
/, which handles prefix != exec-prefix, but is not relocatable. ;-(

I think the answer is to let the packager decide, ie. add an option to
make the archive relative to / or prefix.  (And it should blow up if
prefix != exec-prefix and you try to make a prefix-relative archive.)

> * how can I define the compiler settings for extension
>   compilation (it defaults to -m486 for RPMs -- -mcpu=pentium
>   would be more appropriate; default for standard bdist
>   seems to be -O2 and no architecture) ?

For a straight Distutil build (ie. no RPM involved), setting CFLAGS
should work, but it only applies to extensions (not C libraries).  When
RPM is involved, I'm not sure what the Right Way to do it is.  Maybe
CFLAGS will work?  Maybe editing /etc/rpmrc or /usr/lib/rpm/rpmrc?  I
dunno.

> And a general question: how can I define which files are
> documentation, examples and auxiliary files ? 

Doc files can be defined with the doc_files option to bdist_rpm.  The
easiest way to set this is with a setup.cfg in your distribution root,
eg. the Distutils setup.cfg has:

  [bdist_rpm]
  release = 1
  packager = Greg Ward <gward@python.net>
  doc_files = CHANGES.txt
              README.txt
              USAGE.txt
              doc/
              examples/
  ...

Although I have been thinking that putting making every RPM option a
Distutils option was a bad idea.  Hmmmm.

> More to come :-)

Oh no!  You might want to take a look in the Distutils-0.9.2/TODO file
to see what's on "the list".

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - nerd                                        gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
Does your DRESSING ROOM have enough ASPARAGUS?