Prefered install method?

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Tina I schrieb:
> Another noob question:
> I have written my first linux application that might actually be of 
> interest to others. Just for fun I also wrote an install script that put 
> the files in the common directories for my distro (Debian). That is in 
> /usr/local/. (This particular program can be run directly from the 
> user's /home but as a learning experience I want to do it the 'coorect' 
> way)
> 
> Now, I don't know if that is the way to do it with python applications. 
> I also don't know if a custom install script is the norm. I have seen 
> some use of makefiles and tried to find something about it but the 
> manual for GNUMake really assume you are familiar with/ using C which 
> I'm not. I have googled a lot for this but can't really find anything 
> aimed for someone just learning programming with Python.
> 
> So my question is; What is the preferred/ common way to install a python 
> application so it's not really distro specific? And are there any good 
> resources on this on the web?

These days, it's setuptools. Google for it. It will let you distribute 
your application in a convenient way as so-called EGG (basically a 
ZIP-file), additionally you will get support for installing scripts in 
/usr/bin or wherever you like, and you have versioning support.

If you plan to release the app publically, it will also handle the 
upload to the PyPI, the python package index - also known(?) as cheeseshop.

Diez