:date: 2016-08-20

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Saturday, August 20, 2016
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Get Lino applications to run from PyPI
======================================

I took :ticket:`1143`. The problem is the same as in `Python
Packaging: Data files are put properly in tar.gz file but are not
installed to virtual environment
<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13307408/python-packaging-data-files-are-put-properly-in-tar-gz-file-but-are-not-install>`_.

I have been fiddling with these things in the past several times, but
today I used the following important trick for the first time: I must
use a suite of commands for testing this locally.

First I initialized a temporary virtualenv::

    $ go cosi
    $ virtualenv tmp/env
    $ . tmp/env/bin/activate
    $ pip install lino-cosi

And then I invoked the following suite many times::
    
    $ inv sdist
    $ pip uninstall lino-cosi -y
    $ pip install --no-index -f /home/luc/work/book/docs/dl/lino-cosi/ lino-cosi
    $ ls tmp/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lino_cosi/lib/sepa/config
    ls: cannot access 'tmp/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lino_cosi/lib/sepa/config': No such file or directory

What I learned:

- Adding :xfile:`__init__.py` files is definitively not a good idea.

- The important thing was `include_package_data=True`.

- I don't need to specify `package_data` at all. Python looks at
  :xfile:`MANIFEST.in` for deciding what the package data is.
  Observation confirmed by `this thread
  <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7522250/how-to-include-package-data-with-setuptools-distribute>`_.

- I could not confirm whether it is necessary to specify
  `zip_safe=False` because at least on my machine it did not use zip
  files. But `here
  <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15869473/what-is-the-advantage-of-setting-zip-safe-to-true-when-packaging-a-python-projec>`__
  they say that if I don't specify it, it might happen that the
  package gets installed as a zipped file, and in that case (and
  because I dont use pkg_resources) Lino would not find package data
  files.

- I added `*.rst` in :xfile:`MANIFEST.in` so that :file:`README.rst`
  gets included. I still get the warning "sdist: standard file not
  found: should have one of README, README.txt"

  I removed `*.py` and `*.po` because it seems that these are not
  necessary.

- Which one is better? `from distutils.core import setup or `from
  setuptools import setup`? --> `You should use setuptools if you
  can. <https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3882rh/distutils_vs_setuptools/>`__


I then started (but not yet published) new versions to PyPI:

- Lino 1.7.6, Lino XL 1.7.5, Lino Cosi 0.0.4