[Distutils] [Python Language Summit] Distutils / Packaging survey

[zooko]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 2:27 AM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> For example, if my application has a log file, it is better under  
> Debian to have it in /var/log/xxx
>
> In the meantime, for the same application, I don't want to bother  
> under win32 about that, the log can leave inside the package for  
> instance.

Yes, I see.  None of my packages have log files, so I haven't had  
that particular problem, but I do have a problem with doc files.   
Under Debian, they ought to be in /usr/share/doc/$PKG/, and so I do  
this in my setup.py:

doc_loc = "share/doc/python-" + PKG
data_files = [(doc_loc, data_fnames)]

http://allmydata.org/trac/zfec/browser/zfec/setup.py?rev=285#L119

This means that stdeb produces a .deb which puts the doc files into  
the right directory, but it also means that if you install with  
easy_install then there will be a "share/doc/python-$PKG" directory  
inside the .egg directory, which isn't ideal.

It would be better if there were a way to inform distutils/setuptools  
that certain files were doc files.  Distutils/setuptools wouldn't  
need to know what to *do* with doc files.  That would be up to a  
plugin like stdeb to say "Oh, doc files!  I'll put them in share/doc/ 
python-$PKG".

> In other words, what would be the new metadata we could put in the  
> setup.py in the package to minimize the work to be done on stdeb  
> side ?

Yes, exactly!

Regards,

Zooko
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