Mailman 3 May 2000 - Distutils-SIG

distutils & Borland's free compiler
by Lyle Johnson 06 May '00

06 May '00

Gordon, First of all, thanks very much for posting your paper about compiling Python extensions with Borland's free compiler. I haven't tried it out yet but am looking forward to experimenting with this next week. I also wanted to check to see if you are familiar with the work going on in the Distutils-SIG (which will become part of the standard Python library in Python 1.6): http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig Their support for building Python extensions under Windows is currently limited to Microsoft Visual C++. I'd like to work-up a new module for the distutils which would also the support use of Borland's C++ compiler, based on your instructions (and with all appropriate credits, of course). Had you planned to look at that, or do you know if anyone else is? I obviously don't want to duplicate anyone else's efforts... Lyle

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Nem bdist_rpm
by Harry Henry Gebel 05 May '00

05 May '00

Here is a new version of bdist_rpm. bdist_rpm now builds in build/rpm using `rpm -ba` so it no longer requires the spec file to be in the source distribution and can be completely built by non-root users. Here are the current options: --spec-only - only generates a spec file --source-only - only build a source RPM --binary-only - only build a binary RPW --use-bzip2 - makes source distribution using bzip2 --no-clean - does not clean build/rpm/BUILD after building RPM --arch has been temporarily disabled since 'rpm -ba --target=' does not seem to work with 'rpm -ba --define'. I will be trying to find out why on the RPM list. `./setup.py clean` does not yet take care of 'build/rpm'. When used with the --spec-only option the spec file is placed in redhat/, otherwise it is placed in /build/rpm/SPECS. -- Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS West Dover Hundred, Delaware PyNcurses ncurses binding for Python http://pyncurses.sourceforge.net

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Latest bdist_rpm
by Harry Henry Gebel 05 May '00

05 May '00

I have added type checking to bdist_rpm, eliminated the ability to override meta-data supplied in './setup.py', and changed the function names to the standard Distutils style. Tomorrow I hope to be building with `rpm -ba` instead of `rpm -ta` and I have some options I will add. The patch to existing files and the 'package_data' file have not changed. -- Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS West Dover Hundred, Delaware PyNcurses ncurses binding for Python http://pyncurses.sourceforge.net

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Instructions for bdist_rpm
by Harry Henry Gebel 05 May '00

05 May '00

Okay, here are the directions for bdist_rpm To run: ./setup.py bdist --format=rpm or ./setep.py bdist_rpm Will build an RPM using DistributionMetaData to get package information. Additional information can be put in the file 'package_data'. 'package_data' contains python code setting the following variables (variables marked with * are by default set from DistributionMetaData and do not be need assigned in package_data unless you need to override the values in .setup.py): *name - name of package *version - package version *summary - short summary of package *description - long summary of package summaries - a dictionary, keys are locales and values are summaries for that locale. descriptions - a dictionary, keys are locales and values are descriptions for that locale. *copyright - the license used by rpm release - the release of the rpm (for example '1mdk') group - the group the package belongs to vendor - the package's vendor packager - the package's packager *url - the package's URL doc - a list of string containing names of files and directories to put in the system's documentation directory. changelog - a string containing a properly formated changelog (I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure RPM will exit with an error if it is fed an improperly format changelog) Unless otherwise noted these must all be strings. There is no type checking yet, I would like people's opinion: should they be cast to strings or should an exception be raised if they are not strings? Or maybe some combination; for example releases are (especially on RedHat) often numerals, so it might be natural to allow a numeric value and cast it to a string, but a value like '8' would probably never make sense for something like 'copyright', so an exception would be raised. 'package_data's local namespace includes the variable 'package_type' which is set to 'rpm', this variable will hopefully allow 'package_data' to be used for all bdist_* commands . bdist_rpm works by making a spec file and saving it into the 'redhat/' directory (making the directory if necessary), it then produces a gzipped source tarball and runs `rpm -ta --clean` on the tarball. bdist_rpm leaves the spec file and tarball around since they would probably be wanted anyway. Here are the caveats I mentioned. If you have not configured rpm to allow you to build RPMs without being root you will have a directory and three files (the redhat/ directory and spec file, the MANIFEST file, and the tarball) saying around owned by root. The other caution is that the spec file must be included in MANIFEST.in, otherwise it will not be included in the tarball and therefore the tarball will not be buildable with rpm. The first will be solved with an option I am adding tonight which will just generate the spec file and tarball, the user can then su and run 'rpm -ta' on the tarball. The MANIFEST problem I don't know what is the best way to solve, should the spec file be automatically added like setup.py, should bdist_rpm add it to the MANIFEST itself, or should it remain the user's responsibility? If it is automatically included should package_data also be automatically included?, if a user alters the package in some way they will want to change the 'release' variable and regenerate the spec file, this will be easier if they have 'package_data' What is everybody's input on the above? -- Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS West Dover Hundred, Delaware PyNcurses ncurses binding for Python: http://pyncurses.sourceforge.ne

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HTML manuals available
by Greg Ward 03 May '00

03 May '00

Hi all -- the Distutils manuals are now available in HTML at http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/doc/ Thanks to Fred Drake for doing the LaTeX2HTML magic to make this happen! Greg -- Greg Ward - nerd gward(a)python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

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New bdist_rpm patch
by Harry Henry Gebel 02 May '00

02 May '00

Here is the bdist_rpm patch again, a small bug has been removed. This week, (I am hoping on Thursday) I will be sending a patch adding post- and pre- install and uninstall scripts, plus allowing the build and install rpm sections to be customized (I think this last will have to be used only very rarely with Distutils.) I still haven't heard from anyone about their opinion on how to handle CFLAGS. -- Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS West Dover Hundred, Delaware PyNcurses ncurses binding for Python: http://pyncurses.sourceforge.net

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