[Distutils] Distributing Python-programs to Ubuntu users

[Ben Finney]

Thanks for moving the discussion to this forum, where it's better
suited. I'll reprise my existing reply again here for this new thread.

Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarnason at gmail.com> writes:

> I'm new at the mailing list. I write small games in Python/PyGame. I
> want to find a way to make a downloadable package/installer/script to
> put on my webpage, especially for Ubuntu users.

The primary means of distributing your work to the outside world should,
first, be a working Distutils ‘sdist’ (“source distribution”). This
allows the work to be installed via ‘python ./setup.py install’, with
installation options customisable by those users who want to do so.

An important set of users who might (read “will”) want to customise
installation options is that set of users who can package your work for
specific distributions. They will take the Distutils configuration as a
starting point, and apply OS-specific packaging from that point.

You would do well to be familiar with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
<URL:http://www.pathname.com/fhs/> and specifications for desktop
applications <URL:http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications> as
they apply to whatever programs you're making. Many aspects of these
(Especially of the FHS) are taken care of for you by the Distutils
infrastructure, but many are not.

> I've skimmed a couple of tutorials on how to generate .deb-files, but,
> wow, it's a whole new skill set to do that!

Right. It's a separate body of research, learning, and discipline to
make packages that operate smoothly on a particular operating system. If
you're not interested in that, please don't do a half-hearted job;
instead, focus on making a great program, and leave the job of making a
great package to someone better placed to do it.

> Does anyone have any hint on a more economic way of creating
> single-file distribution packages for Python+PyGame projects? Maybe
> some GUI-tool that automates the .deb file creation process, but
> targetting Python specifically and not C++.

Those tools that exist do more harm than good, in my opinion: they
either do very little to help, or they necessarily make guesses about
the right thing to do. The policies and specifications change from time
to time, and such automated tools cannot hope to be both comprehensive
and up-to-date.

As someone who has some familiarity with the OS packaging process, I
would beg you not to make OS-specific packages without a good, current
understanding of the OS packaging policy you're targeting. If that
doesn't sound like fun, just concentrate on making your program great,
standards-compliant, and responsive to bug reports — especially from OS
package maintainers. That will make it much more attractive and give a
much better change of having a good range of OS-specific packages.

-- 
 \            “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” |
  `\                       —Melvin Kranzberg's First Law of Technology |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney