[Distutils] introspecting package data

[Tarek Ziadé]

2009/6/30 Chris Withers <chris at simplistix.co.uk>:
> Jim Fulton wrote:
>>
>>>> What do you want to do exactly ? And do you do it with setuptools ?
>>>> If it's about setup.py I'm guesssing it's done on a distribution
>>>> source, not an installed source ?
>>>
>>> I'm building Sphinx documentation, but I want the conf.py to be driven
>>> right from the package it's in, rather than having to manually enter the
>>> information again...
>>
>> I recommend creating a data file that both setup.py and sphinx's config.py
>> read.
>
> Declarative specification of package metadata in a non-python format?
>
> Heresy! ;-)

Yes,  as long as the metadata are in a python file, you're in trouble
to automate anything like you are mentioning.
But a static metadata system needs to provide a registery mechanism,
so we can call some arbitrary code
when some metadata are generated at installation time for instance.

In any case, one of the goal we have is to move to a static-based
metadata solution.

This work has been initiated at Pycon by Tres and Matthias, see the notes here

http://wiki.python.org/moin/Distutils/StaticMetadata

if you guys want to start filling your ideas in this page, below
Tres's notes, this would be helpfull

This is the "next" big topic I guess, after PEP 376, PEP 386, and PEP
345 extension.

Tarek