[Distutils] Distutils 1.0.1 releasee

[Bastian Kleineidam]

Hi all,

Im Jahre 2000 schrieb Greg Ward:
> but I don't think the two should be confused.
Yes, I agree.

>all we can do for run-time configuration is promote a standard place for 
>Python applications to install and find such config data, whereas we can 
>specify everything about build-time config data.  So which are you
>talking about here?
I am talking about both, but lets have a look my source:

class MyDistribution(Distribution):
    def __init__(self, attrs=None):
        Distribution.__init__(self, attrs=attrs)
        self.config_file = self.get_name()+"Conf.py"

    def create_conf_file(self, directory, data=[]):
        """generate a configuration file with all metadata the data
           supplied in the 'data' argument"""
        data.insert(0, "# this file is automatically created by setup.py")
        filename = os.path.join(directory, self.config_file)
        # add metadata
        metanames = dir(self.metadata) + \
                    ['fullname', 'contact', 'contact_email']
        for name in metanames:
              method = "get_" + name
              cmd = "%s = %s" % (name, `getattr(self.metadata, method)()`)
              data.append(cmd)
        util.execute(write_file, (filename, data),
          "creating %s" % filename, self.verbose>=1,self.dry_run)

So create_conf_file generates a file <package>Conf.py. You can call the
function from any place in your code (or you can call it never).
I call in two places:
1) If I need to store some configuration values, my custom
   "config" command creates this file with the config values in the
   'data' list.
2) When installing. This way the <package>Conf.py is installed as a
   module and my program has runtime information by importing the module.

I think this approach is nice because you can have both configuration and
runtime information stored in the file. Furthermore the patch is just
adding a function so it does not break any existing apps.

 Bastian