[Distutils] Static metadata using setup.cfg

[David Lyon]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:03:57 -0500, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
> David Lyon wrote:
>>> the long_description field is expressed as a multi-line field following
>>> the config parser convention so no problem for it (see my example)
> 
> The long_description field is also a reStructuredText field and as such,
> for the developer to preview it during its composure, it needs to be
> left-aligned.  While a developer -could- cut/paste it into a separate
> text file each time he wants to test preview it, that would be annoying.

ok - well not much can be done to eliminate the classic ID10t error..

and wth is that guy doing? editing the file without emacs... serves
him right (doesn't emacs fix everything?) :-)

Normal users would edit the text imho with a text boxt. The congigparser
takes care of adjusting everything up. I'm operating on the assumption
that there's a "util" to edit the file somewhere in distutils..

> Many of these ideas have already been expressed in a buildout.cfg file
> that also uses ConfigParser.  Look there for ideas on how to do lists,
> order things, substitute fields.

If I get time...

I'm just bashing this stuff out as I go along.. and there's probably
some way of improving most everything I suggest. I'm not an 'old'
python hack.. I'm still learning..

>  However if you put too much expressive
> power into the metadata file, you make it hard to programatically reason
> about what is means, which is the whole point of having a static
> metadata file.  

That's why we need to keep it simple. Handle 85% of use cases with
config and the other 15% with the ability to use (python) code.

David