Lumír Jasiok lumir.jasiok@vsb.cz writes:

To create a Debian package requires more input from the person doing the packaging than what distutils usually requires.

Packages of Python distributions for Debian are constructed using the usual Debian tools, including creating a 'debian/rules' file with the required targets and whatever specific actions need to be performed in those targets.

For invoking distutils, usually the 'build' and 'install' targets will invoke the 'setup.py' (with 'build' or 'install' respectively) and use the packages 'python-central' or 'python-support' to gather the resulting files into the correct places for a Debian package.

I don't know what efforts there may be in that direction, but it would certainly require a significant amount of input from the person doing the packaging; more than can be found in an average package from PyPI.

That input is usually provided by just following the process of building any Debian package, whether Python or not, using Debian developer tools (including the Python-specific 'python-central' or 'python-support' packages) instead of building it into distutils.

-- \ “Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?” “Wuh, I think | `\ so, Brain, but if we didn't have ears, we'd look like weasels.” | _o__) —_Pinky and The Brain_ | Ben Finney

On Jul 31, 2008, at 3:46 AM, Lumír Jasiok wrote:

Please try stdeb [1] and let us know how it works for you. It works
for me for a few small Python projects (including zfec [2],
pycryptopp [3], and pyutil [4]).

However, it is still a young tool and you should be willing to report
bugs if you try it.

By the way, I've contributed a patch for stdeb which is not yet in
the current release of stdeb which makes it automatically detect
which debian packages your package depends on, using the
"install_requires" field from the setup() args: [5].

Thank you for your help in improving Python packaging tools!

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://stdeb.python-hosting.com [2] http://allmydata.org/trac/zfec/ [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/pycryptopp/ [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/pyutil [5] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-June/009632.html