[Distutils] Self Introduction and Getting Hands On

[Bohuslav Kabrda]

----- Original Message -----
> On 6/26/12 1:23 PM, Bohuslav Kabrda wrote:
> > [...]
> > Exactly, my project is aimed at creating just the specfiles. In
> > Fedora (and other distros as well), there is a review process that
> > each package must go through and having a specfile written
> > according to the current guidelines is a necessary part of that.
> > "pypi2rpm" solves a different use case than distro-packagers need.
> >
> > I have a pretty good idea about how distro-packagers would like
> > things to work and combining it with the "pypi2rpm", I see it this
> > way:
> > 1) Starting point: we have a Python package.
> > 2) We want to:
> > 2a) directly convert it to binary RPM => we use "pypi2rpm" - good
> > for Mozilla to deploy apps, not useful for distro-packagers
> >   - Producing binary RPM probably could be left in distutils, but
> >   looking at the bigger picture, RPM has different lifecycle than
> >   python standard library, so it might be good to pull this
> >   functionality out.
> Yeah -- I had no intent to keep bdist_rpm in the stdlib. We removed
> it
> from distiutils2
> 

Ah, I see. I didn't have that much time to get familiar with distutils2 yet - I only know them from the documentation :)

> > 2b) produce a specfile/whatever that is called in other
> > distributions => use Fedora's "pyp2rpm"/is there something similar
> > for other distributions?
> You mean for RPM that are not Fedora/RHEL ?  I have no idea.
> >   - This should definitely be present in a library outside of
> >   Python - we may want to provide templates/distro-specific stuff
> >   here and be able to react to new releases of different distros
> >   (when they change their way of packaging).
> >
> > So the best approach that currently comes to my mind is having a
> > functionality in distutils, that can provide the package metadata
> > (license, runtime/build requirements)
> you can already have this, with the current Distutils code.
> 

True. What I meant by this is, that providing the metadata is the thing that distutils should do. In my opinion, they shouldn't do anything more (no distro-specific stuff).

> > and separate tool(s) that would be able to use these metadata to
> > a) convert directly to binary packages (rpm, deb, etc.)
> > or
> > b) produce specfiles/whatever for the packagers' reviews
> >
> > Some questions that pop immediately are
> > - Should a) and b) be one library or two? They handle packages in
> > completely different way.]
> In a different project I think. For debian there's 'stdeb'  -
> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/stdeb
> 
> 
> > - Should every distribution provide its very own library to handle
> > a) and b) stuff or should these be a general libraries with
> > distro-specific modules+templates?
> > ...
> 
> As a user I want to pick up *any* project, and build a deb or a rpm,
> even it the author did not provide the deb/rpm integration, even if I
> eventually need to tweak the process.
> 

What I meant here is - should there be one big tool producing the specfiles/debian stuff/... or one project for RPM specfiles, one project for debian stuff...

> >
> > How does this sound? This is just a general idea that came to my
> > mind some time ago - feel free to dump it, if you don't like it :)
> So what are your plans ?
> 

Since I'm new here, I first want to watch and listen and contribute to the discussions.
I would certainly like to discuss the distro-specific stuff in more detail and participate on a solution. That means first create a clear vision with more distutils people here and then actually take my part implementing it. It would certainly be nice to create something flexible that could do both the specfiles and binary packages for more distributions - for me, that's the goal here (and of course, Python rocks).

> > Have a nice day,
> > Slavek.
> >
> >> Cheers
> >> Tarek
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
> >>
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Regards,
Bohuslav "Slavek" Kabrda.