[Distutils] setuptools wish list

[lunasspecto at gmail.com]

Hi folks. I'm new to the list and don't mean to impose, but I've been
following some of the recent developments of the PyPA and I'm wondering if
the unreasonable expectations I have for Python packaging are about to come
true, or if there's a simple workaround to achieve some of these goals in
the meantime.

In building the Python 3 application I'm currently working on I have the
end goal of supporting Windows users, Debian-based system users, and maybe
Fedora users with installable distributions they can install without
worrying about dependencies. I won't consider my packaging efforts to be
successful if somebody using one of these systems has to manually install
Python 3.4 or PyQt5 before they can install my application. Ultimately I'd
also like to package my application as a standalone OS X app, but I don't
have access to an OS X system right now.


 After some wrestling with cx_Freeze in Python 3.4 on Windows 7 in a
VirtualBox machine, I've been able to put together a satisfactory Windows
test distribution bundled with all its dependencies. setuptools will
produce an rpm package, but I wouldn't know how to make sure the package
depends on PyQt 5 and the QScintilla plugin for PyQt 5, so Fedora users can
install my application without having to know they need these dependencies.
I can't list PyQt5 or PyQt5.Qsci in the "install-requires" setuptools
option because, as far as I understand, this option is only for listing
packages that can be installed by pip. I have managed to set up a Debian
packaging infrastructure such that I can build a Debian binary package with
the command "dh --with python3 binary-indep", but I haven't figured out how
to include an XDG menu entry in the package, and I consider this a
deal-breaker. Of course, setuptools doesn't currently handle XDG menus at
all.


 So my wish list for setuptools or a similar tool is:

*

Automated XDG menu entry generation

*

Some way to handle dependencies that can't be installed by pip

*

Automated generation of Debian binary packages good enough to be accepted
into the repositories

*

Automated generation of rpm packages with all the right dependencies (For
all I know this could exist already, but considering the way dependencies
are currently handled by setuptools I really doubt it)

*

In a perfect universe, easy cross-building functionality, so I could
produce a standalone Windows executable or an OS X app from the comfort of
Xubuntu.
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