dirtbike

Purpose of the software

This is a Python program that takes packages that are already installed on a system and converts them to wheels.

That is an admittedly strange goal. The deeper purpose is to help Debian packages like pip vendor their dependencies in a way compatible with the packaging policy for Debian, and hopefully other GNU/Linux distributions.

Therefore, we are eager to see this tool discussed and/or adopted by Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, and any other software distributions that distribute pip as well as other Python packages.

License

This software is available under the terms of the same license as pya/pip:

Copyright (c) 2008-2014 The developers (see AUTHORS.txt file)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
(the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Origin of the name

The name comes from a They Might Be Giants song:

Here comes the dirt bike,
Beware of the dirt bike.
[...]
You see I never thought I'd understand.
Till that bike took me by the hand,
Now I ride.

The real motivation behind the name was to find a word or two that alludes to the idea of "wheel."

"Boat of Car" might have been too confusing.