DEPRECATED

This project has been deprecated and will no longer be updated. The original purpose of this project was to make some functionality of the long-defunct distutils2/packaging project available on top of classic distutils/setuptools. In particular, the ability to provide package configuration declaratively through the setup.cfg file instead of in setup.py. This functionality has now been available in plain setuptools for some time, and is fairly complete.

Porting

Here is a brief guide for porting setup.cfg files understood by d2to1 to setuptools, as there are a few slight differences in the section names and syntax.

• Most options supported by the [metadata] section are the same with a few exceptions. You can find a complete listing of options supported by the [metadata] section here
  • summary -> description: A short description of the package should go in the description option. summary is still available as an alias for description, however.
  • description-file -> long_description: file:: A longer description (typically a README) for the package goes in the long_description option. This supports a special value in the form file: <file1>, <file2>, ... which means the long description is read from a file in the repository given as a relative path. One or more files may be listed (comma-separated). The file: format is available in some other options as well. See the table linked above.
  • home-page -> url: home-page is still allowed as an alias but its use is discouraged.
  • classifier -> classifiers: classifier is still allowed as an alias but its use is discouraged.
  • requires-dist -> options.install_requires: This is the same as the install_requires keyword for the setup() function in setuptools. It should be moved to the [options] section of setup.cfg.
• The [files] section no longer exists. Most options that went under this section now go under a section called [options]. This includes: packages, package_dir, scripts. The install_requires option also goes here, among other, more specialized options (including most options from the [backwards_compat] section of d2to1.
  • The options.packages option supports a special value find: which automatically includes any packages found (including sub-packages) at the root of the repository (or under the package_dir directory). There is also a dedicated section [options.packages.find] which allows passing additional options to control how packages are searched, and are equivalent to the keyword arguments accepted by setuptools.find_packages.
  • The extra_files option is not supported; instead, add these files to your project's MANIFEST.in.
• Options that take values consisting of one or more <key> = <value> pairs have their own sections in the new setuptools format. These include [options.package_data], [options.data_files], [options.extras_require] and [options.entry_points].

Example

Here is an example of d2to1's setup.cfg file (the contents of which are listed below in the old README) ported to the new format:

[metadata]
name = d2to1
version = 0.2.12
author = Erik M. Bray
author_email = embray@stsci.edu
description = Allows using distutils2-like setup.cfg files for a package's metadata with a distribute/setuptools setup.py
long_description = file: README.rst, CHANGES.rst
url = http://pypi.python.org/pypi/d2to1
classifiers =
    Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable
    Environment :: Plugins
    Framework :: Setuptools Plugin
    Intended Audience :: Developers
    License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License
    Operating System :: OS Independent
    Programming Language :: Python
    Programming Language :: Python :: 3
    Topic :: Software Development :: Build Tools
    Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules
    Topic :: System :: Archiving :: Packaging

[options]
packages = d2to1, d2to1.extern
install_requires = setuptools
# note: the setuptools test command is deprecated since 41.5.0 so this is not useful
tests_require = nose

[options.entry_points]
distutils.setup_keywords =
    d2to1 = d2to1.core:d2to1
zest.releaser.prereleaser.middle =
    d2_version = d2to1.zestreleaser:prereleaser_middle
zest.releaser.postreleaser.middle =
    d2_version = d2to1.zestreleaser:postreleaser_middle

Old README follows:

Introduction

d2to1 (the 'd' is for 'distutils') allows using distutils2-like setup.cfg files for a package's metadata with a distribute/setuptools setup.py script. It works by providing a distutils2-formatted setup.cfg file containing all of a package's metadata, and a very minimal setup.py which will slurp its arguments from the setup.cfg.

Note: distutils2 has been merged into the CPython standard library, where it is now known as 'packaging'. This project was started before that change was finalized. So all references to distutils2 should also be assumed to refer to packaging.

Rationale

I'm currently in the progress of redoing the packaging of a sizeable number of projects. I wanted to use distutils2-like setup.cfg files for all these projects, as they will hopefully be the future, and I much prefer them overall to using an executable setup.py. So forward-support for distutils2 is appealing both as future-proofing, and simply the aesthetics of using a flat text file to describe a project's metadata.

However, I did not want any of these projects to require distutils2 for installation yet--it is too unstable, and not widely installed. So projects should still be installable using the familiar ./setup.py install, for example. Furthermore, not all use cases required by some of the packages I support are fully supported by distutils2 yet. Hopefully they will be eventually, either through the distutils2 core or through extensions. But in the meantime d2to1 will try to keep up with the state of the art and "best practices" for distutils2 distributions, while adding support in areas that it's lacking.

Usage

d2to1 requires a distribution to use distribute or setuptools. Your distribution must include a distutils2-like setup.cfg file, and a minimal setup.py script. For details on writing the setup.cfg, see the distutils2 documentation. A simple sample can be found in d2to1's own setup.cfg (it uses its own machinery to install itself):

[metadata]
name = d2to1
version = 0.2.12
author = Erik M. Bray
author-email = embray@stsci.edu
summary = Allows using distutils2-like setup.cfg files for a package's metadata with a distribute/setuptools setup.py
description-file =
    README.rst
    CHANGES.rst
home-page = http://pypi.python.org/pypi/d2to1
requires-dist = setuptools
classifier =
    Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable
    Environment :: Plugins
    Framework :: Setuptools Plugin
    Intended Audience :: Developers
    License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License
    Operating System :: OS Independent
    Programming Language :: Python
    Programming Language :: Python :: 3
    Topic :: Software Development :: Build Tools
    Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules
    Topic :: System :: Archiving :: Packaging

[files]
packages =
    d2to1
    d2to1.extern
extra_files =
    CHANGES.rst
    LICENSE
    ez_setup.py

[backwards_compat]
zip-safe = False
tests-require = nose

[entry_points]
distutils.setup_keywords =
    d2to1 = d2to1.core:d2to1
zest.releaser.prereleaser.middle =
    d2_version = d2to1.zestreleaser:prereleaser_middle
zest.releaser.postreleaser.middle =
    d2_version = d2to1.zestreleaser:postreleaser_middle

The minimal setup.py should look something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

try:
    from setuptools import setup
except ImportError:
    from distribute_setup import use_setuptools
    use_setuptools()
    from setuptools import setup

setup(
    setup_requires=['d2to1'],
    d2to1=True
)

Note that it's important to specify d2to1=True or else the d2to1 functionality will not be enabled. It is also possible to set d2to1='some_file.cfg' to specify the (relative) path of the setup.cfg file to use. But in general this functionality should not be necessary.

It should also work fine if additional arguments are passed to setup(), but it should be noted that they will be clobbered by any options in the setup.cfg file.

Caveats

• The requires-dist option in setup.cfg is implemented through the distribute/setuptools install_requires option, rather than the broken "requires" keyword in normal distutils.
• Not all features of distutils2 are supported yet. If something doesn't seem to be working, it's probably not implemented yet.
• Does not support distutils2 resources, and probably won't since it relies heavily on the sysconfig module only available in Python 3.2 and up. This is one area in which d2to1 should really be seen as a transitional tool. I don't really want to include a backport like distutils2 does. In the meantime, package_data and data_files may still be used under the [files] section of setup.cfg.