[Distutils] Builders vs Installers

[Daniel Holth]

Agreed that python is a fine language for build scripts.

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
> On Mar 27, 2013, at 1:41 PM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> PJ Eby <pje <at> telecommunity.com> writes:
>>
>>> The challenge here is again the distinction between raw source and
>>> sdist, and the interaction with revision control.  Either there has to
>>> be some way to tell MEBS (i.e. the overall build system) what tool
>>> you're using to generate that JSON, or you have to check a generated
>>> file into revision control, and make sure you've updated it.  (Which
>>> is error prone, even if you don't mind checking generated files into
>>> revision control.)
>>>
>>> This strongly suggests there needs to be *some* human-editable way to
>>> at *least* specify what tool you're using to generate the JSON with.
>>
>> There are no doubt many possible workflows, but one such is:
>>
>> metadata input files - any number, hand-edited, checked into source control
>> metadata merge tool - creates JSON metadata from input files
>> JSON metadata - produced by tool, so not checked in
>>
>> If the "merge tool" (which could be a simple Python script) is custom to a
>> project, it can be checked into source control in that project. If it is used
>> across multiple projects, it is maintained as a separate tool in its own repo
>> and, if you are just using it but not maintaining it, it becomes part of your
>> build toolset (like sphinx-build). Actually, the doc tools seem to be a good
>> analogy - create a useful format which is a pain to edit by hand (HTML that
>> looks nice in a browser) from some checked in sources which are reasonable
>> to edit by hand (.rst) + a merge tool (Sphinx).
>>
>> The merge tool seems similar in kind to the release.py script that many
>> projects have, which creates release distribution files, bumps version numbers,
>> registers and uploads to PyPI.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Vinay Sajip
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>
>
> I don't think the packaging formats should dictate the development flow at all. .IN files and such all dictate how that should be. To me this is an installer issue not a packaging issue and it's best solved in the installers. Obviously there is some benefit to a "standard" way for installers to treat these but I don't think it should be defined in terms of the packaging formats. Hence my off the cuff suggestion of keeping setup.py develop, or develop.py or some such script that express purpose is in use for development checkouts, but that development checkouts should be discouraged unless you're actively working on that project.
> -----------------
> Donald Stufft
> PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA
>
>
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