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<title>An amazing summer of code working on distutils2 - Alexis Métaireau</title>
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<li><a class="main" href="/">Alexis Métaireau</a></li>
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<li><a class=""
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href="https://blog.notmyidea.org/journal/index.html">Journal</a></li>
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<li><a class="selected"
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href="https://blog.notmyidea.org/code/">Code, etc.</a></li>
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href="https://blog.notmyidea.org/weeknotes/">Notes hebdo</a></li>
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<li><a class=""
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href="https://blog.notmyidea.org/lectures/">Lectures</a></li>
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</section>
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<header>
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<h1 class="post-title">An amazing summer of code working on distutils2</h1>
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<time datetime="2010-08-16T00:00:00+02:00">16 août 2010</time>
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</header>
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<article>
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<p>The <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of Code</a> I’ve spent
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working on <a href="http://hg.python.org/distutils2/">distutils2</a> is over. It
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was a really amazing experience, for many reasons.</p>
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<p>First of all, we had a very good team, we were 5 students working on
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distutils2: <a href="http://zubin71.wordpress.com">Zubin</a>,
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<a href="http://wokslog.wordpress.com/">Éric</a>,
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<a href="http://gsoc.djolonga.com/">Josip</a>,
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<a href="http://konryd.blogspot.com/">Konrad</a> and me. In addition,
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<a href="http://mouadino.blogspot.com/">Mouad</a> have worked on the PyPI testing
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infrastructure. You could find what each person have done on <a href="http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distutils2/wiki/GSoC_2010_teams">the wiki
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page of
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distutils2</a>.</p>
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<p>We were in contact with each others really often, helping us when
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possible (in #distutils), and were continuously aware of the state of
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the work of each participant. This, in my opinion, have bring us in a
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good shape.</p>
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<p>Then, I’ve learned a lot. Python packaging was completely new to me at
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the time of the GSoC start, and I was pretty unfamiliar with python good
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practices too, as I’ve been introducing myself to python in the late 2009.</p>
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<p>I’ve recently looked at some python code I wrote just three months ago,
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and I was amazed to think about many improvements to made on it. I guess
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this is a good indicator of the path I’ve traveled since I wrote it.</p>
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<p>This summer was awesome because I’ve learned about python good
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practices, now having some strong
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<a href="http://mercurial.selenic.com/">mercurial</a> knowledge, and I’ve seen a
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little how the python community works.</p>
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<p>Then, I would like to say a big thanks to all the mentors that have
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hanged around while needed, on <span class="caps">IRC</span> or via mail, and especially my mentor
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for this summer, <a href="http://tarek.ziade.org">Tarek Ziadé</a>.</p>
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<p>Thanks a lot for your motivation, your leadership and your cheerfulness,
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even with a new-born and a new work!</p>
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<h2 id="why">Why ?</h2>
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<p>I wanted to work on python packaging because, as the time pass, we were
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having a sort of complex tools in this field. Each one wanted to add
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features to distutils, but not in a standard way.</p>
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<p>Now, we have PEPs that describes some format we agreed on (see <span class="caps">PEP</span> 345),
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and we wanted to have a tool on which users can base their code on,
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that’s <a href="http://hg.python.org/distutils2/">distutils2</a>.</p>
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<h2 id="my-job">My job</h2>
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<p>I had to provide a way to crawl the PyPI indexes in a simple way, and do
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some installation / uninstallation scripts.</p>
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<p>All the work done is available in <a href="http://bitbucket.org/ametaireau/distutils2/">my bitbucket
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repository</a>.</p>
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<h3 id="crawling-the-pypi-indexes">Crawling the PyPI indexes</h3>
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<p>There are two ways of requesting informations from the indexes: using
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the “simple” index, that is a kind of <span class="caps">REST</span> index, and using <span class="caps">XML</span>-<span class="caps">RPC</span>.</p>
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<p>I’ve done the two implementations, and a high level <span class="caps">API</span> to query those
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twos. Basically, this supports the mirroring infrastructure defined in
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<span class="caps">PEP</span> 381. So far, the work I’ve done is gonna be used in pip (they’ve
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basically copy/paste the code, but this will change as soon as we get
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something completely stable for distutils2), and that’s a good news, as
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it was the main reason for what I’ve done that.</p>
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<p>I’ve tried to have an unified <span class="caps">API</span> for the clients, to switch from one to
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another implementation easily. I’m already thinking of adding others
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crawlers to this stuff, and it was made to be extensible.</p>
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<p>If you want to get more informations about the crawlers/PyPI clients,
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please refer to the distutils2 documentation, especially <a href="http://distutils2.notmyidea.org/library/distutils2.index.html">the pages
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about
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indexes</a>.</p>
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<p>You can find the changes I made about this in the
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<a href="http://hg.python.org/distutils2/">distutils2</a> source code .</p>
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<h3 id="installation-uninstallation-scripts">Installation / Uninstallation scripts</h3>
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<p>Next step was to think about an installation script, and an uninstaller.
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I’ve not done the uninstaller part, and it’s a smart part, as it’s
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basically removing some files from the system, so I’ll probably do it in
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a near future.</p>
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<p><a href="http://hg.python.org/distutils2/">distutils2</a> provides a way to install
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distributions, and to handle dependencies between releases. For now,
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this support is only about the last version of the <span class="caps">METADATA</span> (1.2) (See,
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the <span class="caps">PEP</span> 345), but I’m working on a compatibility layer for the old
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metadata, and for the informations provided via <span class="caps">PIP</span> requires.txt, for instance.</p>
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<h3 id="extra-work">Extra work</h3>
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<p>Also, I’ve done some extra work. this includes:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>working on the <span class="caps">PEP</span> 345, and having some discussion about it (about
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the names of some fields).</li>
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<li>writing a PyPI server mock, useful for tests. you can find more
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information about it on the
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<a href="http://distutils.notmyidea.org">documentation</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="futures-plans">Futures plans</h2>
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<p>As I said, I’ve enjoyed working on distutils2, and the people I’ve met
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here are really pleasant to work with. So I <em>want</em> to continue
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contributing on python, and especially on python packaging, because
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there is still a lot of things to do in this scope, to get something
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really usable.</p>
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<p>I’m not plainly satisfied by the work I’ve done, so I’ll probably tweak
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it a bit: the installer part is not yet completely finished, and I want
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to add support for a real
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer"><span class="caps">REST</span></a>
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index in the future.</p>
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<p>We’ll talk again of this in the next months, probably, but we definitely
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need a real
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer"><span class="caps">REST</span></a> <span class="caps">API</span>
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for <a href="http://pypi.python.org">PyPI</a>, as the “simple” index <em>is</em> an ugly
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hack, in my opinion. I’ll work on a serious proposition about this,
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maybe involving <a href="http://couchdb.org">CouchDB</a>, as it seems to be a good
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option for what we want here.</p>
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<h2 id="issues">Issues</h2>
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<p>I’ve encountered some issues during this summer. The main one is that’s
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hard to work remotely, especially being in the same room that we live,
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with others. I like to just think about a project with other people, a
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paper and a pencil, no computers. This have been not so possible at the
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start of the project, as I needed to read a lot of code to understand
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the codebase, and then to read/write emails.</p>
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<p>I’ve finally managed to work in an office, so good point for home/office separation.</p>
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<p>I’d not planned there will be so a high number of emails to read, in
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order to follow what’s up in the python world, and be a part of the
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community seems to takes some times to read/write emails, especially for
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those (like me) that arent so confortable with english (but this had
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brought me some english fu !).</p>
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<h2 id="thanks">Thanks !</h2>
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<p>A big thanks to <a href="http://www.graine-libre.fr/">Graine Libre</a> and <a href="http://www.makina-corpus.com/">Makina
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Corpus</a>, which has offered me to come
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into their offices from time to time, to share they cheerfulness ! Many
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thanks too to the Google Summer of Code program for setting up such an
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initiative. If you’re a student, if you’re interested about <span class="caps">FOSS</span>, dont
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hesitate any second, it’s a really good opportunity to work on
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interesting projects!</p>
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</article>
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