packages

[Jaime Wyant]

A package is a collection of related modules.  The modules are
'collected' in a directory that contains a special __init__.py script.

Put this directory some where in your PYTHONPATH and you can do stuff like ->
from mypackage.mymodule import MyObject

The tutorial uses a sound package as its example.  The idea being that
the Sound package contains sub packages.  For instance the
sound.effects package represents some specific sound effect such as:
`echo', 'surround', 'reverse'.

This means that you have a directory structure like (stripped from the
tutorial) ->

Sound/                          Top-level package
      __init__.py               Initialize the sound package
      Effects/                  Subpackage for sound effects
              __init__.py
              echo.py
              surround.py
              reverse.py

What I *dont* like about the example is the PascalStyleCasing used for
the package names.  Is their not some *suggested* standard on naming
conventions?  This is one of my few gripes about python!  The
libraries seem to be written without regards to a consistent naming
standard.  Some modules, such as the logging module use camelCasing
while others such as the string module use lowercaseruntogether
methods.

I hope that python 3000 addresses this!  Me, I've just gotten used to
RTFM'n.  Doh!  Tangent!  Anyway...

Another example of packages that I use is for building my GUI. 
Because I don't have many `screens', I break things up into packages
like this:

myapp.panels (contains all of the `panels' i use)
myapp.dialogs (contains all of the dialogs i use)
myapp.database (contains database related modules)

Which allows me to do something like this in my app ->

from myapp.panels.firsttimepanel import FirstTimePanel

Get it?
jw

On 4/18/05, Mage <mage at mage.hu> wrote:
>        Hello,
> 
> I read about modules and packages in the tutorial. I think I understand
> how to use packages and modules, even I know how to create a module (as
> far I understand it's a simple .py) file , but I don't know how can I
> create a package and when should I do it.
> 
> Where should I look for more information?
> 
>        Mage
> 
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>