Mailman 3 February 2008 - Distutils-SIG

Package versioning
by Timothy Docker 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi all, I've been aware that the distutils sig has been simmerring away, but until recently it has not been directly relevant to what I do. I like the look of the proposed api, but have one question. Will this support an installed system that has multiple versions of the same package installed simultaneously? If not, then this would seem to be a significant limitation, especially when dependencies between packages are considered. Assuming it does, then how will this be achieved? I am presently managing this with a messy arrangement of symlinks. A package is installed with its version number in it's name, and a separate directory is created for an application with links from the unversioned package name to the versioned one. Then I just set the pythonpath to this directory. A sample of what the directory looks like is shown below. I'm sure there is a better solution that this, and I'm not sure that this would work under windows anyway (does windows have symlinks?). So, has this SIG considered such versioning issues yet? Cheers, Tim -------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Docker timd(a)macquarie.com.au Quantative Applications Division Macquarie Bank -------------------------------------------------------------- qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/ total 110 drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:23 1.1 -r--r----- 1 root mts 45172 Sep 1 1998 cdrmodule_0_7_1.so drwxr-xr-x 2 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 chart_1_1 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Fnorb_0_7_1 dr-xr-x--- 3 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 Fnorb_0_8 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 1536 Mar 3 12:45 mts_1_1 dr-xr-x--- 7 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:22 OpenGL_1_5_1 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 1024 Nov 11 11:23 PIL_0_3 drwxr-xr-x 3 mts mts 512 Sep 1 1998 Pmw_0_7 dr-xr-x--- 2 mts mts 512 Nov 11 11:21 v3d_1_1 qad16:qad $ ls -l lib/python/1.1 total 30 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 29 Apr 10 10:43 _glumodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glumodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 30 Apr 10 10:43 _glutmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_glutmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 22 Apr 10 10:43 _imaging.so -> ../PIL_0_3/_imaging.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 36 Apr 10 10:43 _opengl_nummodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_opengl_nummodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 27 Apr 10 10:43 _tkinter.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/_tkinter.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 21 Apr 10 10:43 cdrmodule.so -> ../cdrmodule_0_7_1.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 chart -> ../chart_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 12 Apr 10 10:43 Fnorb -> ../Fnorb_0_8 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 12 Apr 10 10:43 mts -> ../mts_1_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 15 Apr 10 10:43 OpenGL -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 opengltrmodule.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/opengltrmodule.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 33 Apr 10 10:43 openglutil_num.so -> ../OpenGL_1_5_1/openglutil_num.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 PIL -> ../PIL_0_3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 mts mts 10 Apr 10 10:43 Pmw -> ../Pmw_0_7 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 10 Apr 10 10:43 v3d -> ../v3d_1_1

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[Distutils-sig] distutils charter and interscript
by John Skaller 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

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eggs and Python Unicode variants (UCS2, UCS4)
by Martijn Faassen 29 May '09

29 May '09

Hi there, In the lxml project (http://codespeak.net/lxml), we've just noticed the following problem with lxml eggs: you can easy_install an egg that won't work for your Python. This is because Python can be compiled with either 2 or 4 bytes unicode as its internal representation. Any egg that contains compiled C code that uses unicode such as lxml will run into trouble: if it's compiled with a 4 bytes unicode Python, it won't work on a 2 bytes unicode Python, and vice versa. This problem is fairly common in Linux. Many distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora compile their python with 4 bytes unicode internal representation. If you compile a Python interpreter by hand it defaults to 2 bytes unicode, however. Hand-building a Python interpreter is done fairly commonly by Linux sysadmins for various reasons. It would therefore be very nice if it became possible to make eggs for the different unicode compilation options of Python. This configuration dimension is a real world issue for any binary Python module that does anything with unicode text.. In an earlier mail to this list: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2005-October/005222.html M.-A. Lemburg and Phillip Eby had the following discussion: [MAL] >>Please make sure that your eggs catch all possible >>Python binary build dimensions: >> >>* Python version >>* Python Unicode variant (UCS2, UCS4) >>* OS name >>* OS version >>* Platform architecture (e.g. 32-bit vs. 64-bit) [PJE] >As far as I know, all of this except the Unicode variant is captured in >distutils' get_platform(). And if it's not, it should be, since it >affects any other kind of bdist mechanism. I'm not sure whether this means this needs to be escalated from setuptools to the Python interpreter level itself. With this mail, I've done the job escalating this lxml problem to what appears to be the right place, though. :) Thanks, Martijn

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unicode bug in distutils
by Tarek Ziadé 04 Apr '09

04 Apr '09

Hello, I have created a setup.py file for distirbution and I bumped into a small bug when i tried to set my name in the contact field (Tarek Ziadé) Using string (utf8 file): setup( maintainer="Tarek Ziadé" ) leads to: File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/register.py", line 162, in send_metadata auth) File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/register.py", line 257, in post_to_server value = unicode(value).encode("utf-8") UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 10: ordinal not in range(128) Using unicode: setup( maintainer=u"Tarek Ziadé" ) leads to: File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py", line 1094, in write_pkg_file file.write('Author: %s\n' % self.get_contact() ) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 18: ordinal not in range(128) I would propose a patch for this problem but i don't know what would be the best input (i guess unicode for names) Regards Tarek -- Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org Blog EN | http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/

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buildout: setting envirionment variables for zc.recipe.egg:custom?
by Christian Zagrodnick 24 Jun '08

24 Jun '08

Hi, building lxml requires additional configuration so it finds xslt-config correctly. One possibility is to set the PATH environment variable. The other is to call setup.py --xslt-config=... Using setup.py --xslt-config doesn't fit at all into buildout i think. Setting environment variables before installing an egg on the other hand might be useful. Would it make sense to put this into zc.recipe.egg or would it be better to create some unrelated recipe which only sets envirionment variables? Regards, -- Christian Zagrodnick gocept gmbh & co. kg · forsterstrasse 29 · 06112 halle/saale www.gocept.com · fon. +49 345 12298894 · fax. +49 345 12298891

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Adventures with x64, VS7 and VS8 on Windows
by Mark Hammond 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

Hi all, I hope the cross-post is appropriate. I've started playing with getting the pywin32 extensions building under the AMD64 architecture. I started building with Visual Studio 8 (it was what I had handy) and I struck a few issues relating to the compiler version that I thought worth sharing. * In trying to build x64 from a 32bit VS7 (ie, cross-compiling via the PCBuild directory), the python.exe project fails with: pythoncore fatal error LNK1112: module machine type 'X86' conflicts with target machine type 'AMD64' is this a known issue, or am I doing something wrong? * The PCBuild8 project files appear to work without modification (I only tried native compilation here though, not a cross-compile) - however, unlike the PCBuild directory, they place all binaries in a 'PCBuild8/x64' directory. While this means that its possible to build for multiple architectures from the same source tree, it makes life harder for tools like 'distutils' - eg, distutils already knows about the 'PCBuild' directory, but it knows nothing about either PCBuild8 or PCBuild8/x64. A number of other build processes also know to look inside a PCBuild directory (eg, Mozilla), so instead of formalizing PCBuild8, I think we should merge PCBuild8 into PCBuild. This could mean PCBuild/vs7 and PCBuild/vs8 directories with the "project" files, but binaries would still be generated in the 'PCBuild' (or PCBuild/x64) directory. This would mean the same tree isn't capable of hosting 2 builds from different VS compilers, but I think that is reasonable (if it's a problem, just have multiple source directories). I understand that PCBuild8 is not "official", but in the assumption that future versions of Python will use a compiler later than VS7, it makes sense to me to clean this up now - what are others opinions on this? * Re the x64 directory used by the PCBuild8 process. IMO, it makes sense to generate x64 binaries to their own directory - my expectation is that cross-compiling between platforms is a reasonable use-case, and we should support multiple achitectures for the same compiler version. This would mean formalizing the x64 directory in both 'PCBuild' and distutils, and leaving other external build processes to update as they support x64 builds. Does this make sense? Would this fatally break other scripts used for packaging (eg, the MSI framework)? * Wide characters in VS8: PC/pyconfig.h defines PY_UNICODE_TYPE as 'unsigned short', which corresponds with both 'WCHAR' and 'wchar' in previous compiler versions. VS8 defines this as wchar_t, which I'm struggling to find a formal definition for beyond being 2 bytes. My problem is that code which assumes a 'Py_UNICODE *' could be used in place of a 'WCHAR *' now fails. I believe the intent on Windows has always been "PyUNICODE == 'native unicode'" - should PC/pyconfig.h reflect this (ie, should pyconfig.h grow a version specific definition of PyUNICODE as wchar_t)? * Finally, as something from left-field which may well take 12 months or more to pull off - but would there be any interest to moving the Windows build process to a cygwin environment based on the existing autoconf scripts? I know a couple of projects are doing this successfully, including Mozilla, so it has precendent. It does impose a greater burden on people trying to build on Windows, but I'd suggest that in recent times, many people who are likely to want to build Python on Windows are already likely to have a cygwin environment. Simpler mingw builds and nuking MSVC specific build stuff are among the advantages this would bring. It is not worth adding this as "yet another windows build option" - so IMO it is only worth progressing with if it became the "blessed" build process for windows - if there is support for this, I'll work on it as the opportunity presents itself... I'm (obviously) only suggesting we do this on the trunk and am happy to make all agreed changes - but I welcome all suggestions or critisisms of this endeavour... Cheers, Mark

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bdist_wininst and Vista User Account Control (UAC)
by Mark Hammond 10 Mar '08

10 Mar '08

The pywin32 extensions require (well, prefer) administrative access during installation - certain files are copied to the System32 directory and the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is written to. Also, if I understand correctly, if Python happened to be installed into "\Program Files", admin access would be required to create any files in that directory tree - I'm not sure what permissions the \PythonXX directory are created with, but its not unreasable to assume that some shops might choose to secure that directory similarly to "\Program Files". The simplest way to achieve this for bdist_wininst installations is to include some magic in a "manifest". I've confirmed that once this magic is added, programs created by bdist_wininst get the little "shield" icon overlay and prompt for elevation before starting the executable. A problem here is that not all installations will require admin access - eg, a user who installed Python just for themselves will not need elevation to install an extension. A solution here would be for the installer to *not* be marked as requiring elevation, then sniffing the registry to make an educated guess (eg, HKLM\Software\Python\PythonCore\2.5 existing could indicate admin access is required). If it finds elevation is required, it would spawn another copy of itself with elevation requested, and terminate. This will have a side-effect of meaning the installer never gets the "shield" overlay, meaning the user will not be expecting to be prompted - but that is something we can live with. However, there is a complication here. Any "pure python" packages are not tied to a particular Python version, so the user can choose what installed Python version to use. Hence, in the general case, we can only determine if admin is required after the UI has opened and the user has selected the Python version. Arranging for the new "elevated" child process at this point will be (a) ugly, as the UI will vanish before the child process displays its GUI and (b) would require additional command-line processing logic - ie, passing the target directory to the child process. If we could make the determination *before* the GUI opens, it would appear seamless and would not require special command-line handling (the child process just does everything) So I see a few alternatives, but none are very desirable: * Only make this "admin required" check if a specific version of Python is necessary (ie, the package contains extension modules). This would leave pure-python packages out in the cold. * Live with the ugly UI that would result in performing that check after the Python version has been selected, and add the command-line processing necessary to make this work. * Ignore the issue and try to educate people that they must explicitly use "Run as Administrator" for such packages on Vista. I'm wondering if anyone has any opinions or thoughts on how we should handle this? Cheers, Mark

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wanted: a catalog of setuptools plugins
by zooko 05 Mar '08

05 Mar '08

Folks: The setuptools plugins architecture may eventually supplant Makefiles in my projects. It's very nice that people can re-use other people's development hacks as packages containing setuptools plugins instead of by cutting and pasting snippets of code into their Makefiles. It would be nice if I could find a listing of such plugins that I might want to use in my own development. Here is a list of setuptools plugins that I just found by browsing the Python Package Index: setuptools_bzr, setuptools_darcs, setuptools_mtn, setuptools_qt4, darcsver, eggchecker, iw.releaser, apydia, bbfreeze (oh I wish I had known about bbfreeze a month ago!), py2app, mkcode, eggtestinfo, easydeb, buildutils, hg.setuptools, setuptools-git Here is one that I wish someone would convert into a plugin (it runs unit tests using Twisted's "trial" unit test framework): https://code.fluendo.com/elisa/trac/browser/trunk/setup.py So my question is: how can we make it easier for people to find these? I was unaware of most of these until just now and there are probably other useful plugins that I'm still unaware of. One idea that I had was to run a query on the Python Package Index database to find all packages whose setup.py's define entry points in the "distutils.commands" group name. Another was to put the word out (i.e. in the setuptools documentation) that if your package is a setuptools plugin, that you should name your package "setuptools_blah_blah" and register it on the Python Package Index. Regards, Zooko P.S. Here is the trac ticket where the allmydata.org project is discussing moving more of our build infrastructure into setuptools plugins: http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/ticket/179 -- "rewrite our Makefile in Python instead of GNUmake"

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setuptools Fails with Subversion 1.5
by Augie Fackler 03 Mar '08

03 Mar '08

Hey all, With Subversion 1.5 entering alpha, I've been using it for more than just a few projects, and I've noticed that setuptools fails to run in a 1.5 working copy. For the short term, I've found that I can just modify the setuptools source to trust that version 9 WCs will work the same as version 8 WCs. The diff for that is attached. Based on what I've read of subversion's README on the format of the entries file, the modification I've made should be just fine - the overall structure of the file is the same, there's just some new tags possible which will already not get stuck in the regex already in place. In my local testing, using setuptools for installing files works just fine with this patch in place. Peace, Augie Fackler

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Seeking the Essence of the Concept of an Egg
by Jeff Rush 28 Feb '08

28 Feb '08

In preparing for a tutorial on Python eggs, I'm wrestling with the *precise* definition of a "Python egg". It appears to be a slippery term from the various documentation: "There are several binary formats that embody eggs, but the most common is '.egg' zipfile format, because it's a convenient one for distributing projects. All of the formats support including package-specific data, project-wide metadata, C extensions, and Python code." Ok, so what binary formats -other than- .egg files are actually eggs? I figure RPMs, .debs, etc. are eggs, as long as they have an EGG-INFO subdirectory and conform to certain basic structural rules. "Eggs are pluggable distributions in one of the three formats currently supported by ``pkg_resources``. There are built eggs, development eggs, and egg links." Hmmm, so it's not just binary distributions that can be eggs, but also egg-links and development eggs. The concept of a "built egg" egg still includes an RPM or .deb though. "Python Eggs are the preferred binary distribution format for EasyInstall, because they are cross-platform (for "pure" packages), directly importable, and contain project metadata including scripts and information about the project's dependencies. They can be simply downloaded and added to sys.path directly, or they can be placed in a directory on sys.path and then automatically discovered by the egg runtime system." Well drat, so RPMs and .debs are -not- eggs, because you don't just place them on sys.path directly to use them. Egg-links don't quite fit that definition either, unless you look at them funny. So what -other- binary format could that first paragraph be talking about that can be dropped onto sys.path and be picked up by Python? -Jeff Python eggs are so very zen; you can only understand them by already understanding them.

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