[Distutils] "Python Packaging User Guide" has moved

[Paul Moore]

On 16 January 2014 01:25, Chris Jerdonek <chris.jerdonek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a description somewhere of the plan for what
> packaging-related information will be covered in docs.python.org
> proper (and the stages for getting there), and which information will
> be off-loaded to the documentation for the other projects that Marcus
> mentioned?

I don't have a clear picture of the split myself but it seems to me
that docs.python.org should be the master reference data for
*distutils*. That's somewhat screwed, though, as we're recommending
use of setuptools, and setuptools messes round so invasively with
distutils that the usefulness of pure distutils documentation is
limited :-(

I still think that the best resource available would be a basic "best
practice" project template for a simple pure-python package with a few
tests. I started putting one together myself
(https://github.com/pfmoore/sampleproject). It's basically done, but
I'm not sure how it (or something like it) could be incorporated into
the docs. At the moment, I tend to use it as a cut-and-paste starting
point, and I suspect that most people have something similar. Also, it
makes me a bit sad how complicated the setup.py ended up looking
(given that it was supposed to be a "minimum starting point"
example...

Maybe if pip gets support for plugin commands, I could write a "pip
new-project" command that generates an empty project template. That
might be a good place for it - although it takes pip away from being a
pure package management tool and into more of a project development
tool, which maybe isn't right. I'd rather not add yet another tool to
my "essential staring point for building a project" toolset, though...

Paul