[Distutils] People want CPAN :-)

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:42 PM, John Kleint <jkleint at gmail.com> wrote:
>>Tarek Ziadé schrieb:
>>
>>> For the documentation part I am afraid it will be messy for the end
>>> users trying to package apps in Python *until* all PEPs
>>> have made it into Python.
>>>
>>> Although, as Ian Bicking says: we could write today some kind of
>>> all-in-one tutorial so end-users can work out without having to run
>>> after the documenation in several places.
>>
>>Big +1, and I would be more than willing to include it in the standard
>>Python documentation, *even* if it mostly describes setuptools/distribute/pip.
>>
>>When people want to package a library, they *will* look for docs in Python,
>>and at the moment they only find the distutils reference.  While the latter
>>is necessary, a more howto-like standard document is much needed.
>>
>>Georg
>
>
> I have the start of such a document, derived from my own recent
> experience pulling together all the information needed to release a
> new Python project.  It's aimed at people new to packaging and
> possibly open source in general, so it's broader than just packaging.
> It includes things like basic file layout, unit testing, Pylint,
> getting started with Sphinx, a sample (distutils) setup.py, and how to
> register with PyPI.  I try to pull together all the info a novice
> would need to have a reasonable shot at sharing their code.  It's by
> no means all-encompassing (e.g. no mention of native extensions), but
> perhaps someone would be willing to write a complimentary advanced
> packaging howto.  You can find it at:
>
> http://infinitemonkeycorps.net/docs/pph/
>
> Let me know what you think.

That's a great start indeed. If we can expand on the packaging thing we could
take it from here and see who wants to help on this. I could try to convince
some developers from pip and virtualenv to help on this.

Are you willing to share it in a DVCS or something for that work ? How
would you like
to manage contributions in it ?

Tarek