[Distutils] PyPI not rendering ReST long_description

[Chris Jerdonek]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 9:04 AM, Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net> wrote:
> I just uploaded a new pyramid_sqlalchemy package to PyPI. Looking at the
> distribution page at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyramid_sqlalchemy PyPI is
> not rendering ReST. I can’t figure out why though: according to both “python
> setup.py check” and "python setup.py --long-description | rst2html-2.7.py >
> /dev/null” there are no ReST syntax errors in me description. Is there any
> way to see why PyPI is not rendering my ReST?

I filed a PyPI issue about this some time before July 2012.

It bothers me that I can't seem to find the issue listed on the
current PyPI issues page: https://bitbucket.org/pypa/pypi/issues .  It
also disturbs me that I can't seem to find the issue on the old
SourceForge page either: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pypi/ .

The only thing I have to go on is this link which no longer goes anywhere:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3539253&group_id=66150&atid=513503

I had included it in a related issue I filed on the main Python bug tracker:

http://bugs.python.org/issue15266

If I recall, my suggestion in the PyPI issue I filed was three-fold:

1) When uploading a reST long_description to PyPI via the
command-line, PyPI should provide an error message saying why the
conversion to HTML failed (so the user knows what to fix).

2) When setting a reST long_description on PyPI via the web UI, PyPI
should provide an error message saying why the conversion to HTML
failed (so the user knows what to fix).

3) The user should have some way of running the conversion locally (as
a check), using the same rules as PyPI, so the user can be assured in
advance that the conversion will be successful when interacting with
the real PyPI.

The third suggestion was the subject of the Distutils issue I filed on
the main Python bug tracker.

On a related note, in the new packaging docs about registering and
uploading packages to PyPI:

https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorial.html#uploading-your-project-to-pypi

I don't the see the troubleshooting tip that the old packaging docs
contained, namely the advice to try running:

    $ python setup.py --long-description | rst2html.py > output.html

The old location is here:
https://docs.python.org/2.7/distutils/packageindex.html#pypi-package-display
.  It would be good if someone went through that page in its entirety
and made sure that any useful information is copied over or otherwise
reflected in the new packaging docs.

--Chris

> Wichert.
>
>
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