can python access OS level features like bash scripting?

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:40:58 -0300, Krishnakant <hackingkk at gmail.com>  
escribió:

> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 14:55 -0300, Gabriel Genellina wrote:
>
>> Write a setup.py script using the distutils package:
>> http://docs.python.org/distutils/index.html
>>
> So that can distutil do the work of setting up the database and can it
> find for itself if psycopg2 and other related libraries are installed?
> I am going to create a deb file, so is it a good idea to some how have
> the deb rules execute the setup.py file of the distutils?

There are many concerns here:

Database: setup.py can do whatever you want, it's a Python script (it  
*uses* Distutils as a library, not the other way around). So you could  
create the database there. (Some applications do that on the first run,  
when they detect there is none)

Dependencies: If all your dependencies are available as Debian packages,  
just let dpkg handle them. You only have to enumerate the required  
dependencies in the control file.

rules: the rules file will refer to a Makefile where you map the actions  
("build", "install") to the corresponding arguments to setup.py

 From the last point, it's better to start writing a setup.py that works --  
at least, test building a source distribution. Then, add your special  
actions (like creating the initial database). The last step would be to  
add the required Debian files to create a .deb

There are several tutorials on making a .deb out of Python programs -  
google for them.

> Besides, I will also like to create a single file containing all the
> modules i need as dependencies so even if a user does not have internet,
> we can still install the package on that machine.

Isn't enough to distribute all the required packages?

> So will it be a good idea to let distutils do every thing I had
> described about putting files in the place and having the script copyed
> to /usr/bin etc?

You don't *let* distutils do that, you *use* distutils in order to do that.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina