[PEAK] Packaging peak apps

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:23 PM 10/8/04 -0400, Bob Ippolito wrote:

>There is currently no standard way to determine what files a package 
>actually *needs*, versus what files happen to be in there (such as 
>documentation, version control junk, etc.)... so correctly packaging up 
>stuff that requires data files is going to require developing some 
>manifest file or something that says "i need these files".  Preferably 
>this file would be parseable without eval'ing arbitrary python code.
>
>If you come up with something that makes sense, I'll support usage of it 
>in py2app and try and get it supported by at least Twisted and pygame.

Well, for the application being generated, the setup.py will specify what 
"package data" files are valid, so in the case of py2app you can just use 
the distribution object's data to get at that.  The build_py command 
handles generating the actual list.

For already-installed packages, PEP 262 defines an installation manifest 
that would record the data, and in principle should eventually be 
implemented for package data files.

So, my suggestion would be to implement PEP 262 as an add-on to 
'setuptools', and then we're good to go.  ;)

Of course, to do that, we'll probably need to hash some things out on the 
Distutils SIG.  I think I'd want to propose dropping the REQUIRES and 
PROVIDES sections, and of course all my "open issues" listed in the PEP.

What do you think?