[Gmailagent-devel] Creating a Python package 101

[Stas Z <sta...@gm...>]

Waseem,

Creating a single Python package is very easy :-)
http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.1/dist/simple-example.html
This is probably all you need, assuming your package will consist of
libgmail2.py and
constants.py.

Additional info:
The above tutorial uses a call like 'python setup.py sdist' to create
a tgz, this can be
usefull but in my expirience it's to limited because you probably want
to include some
docs like the GPL, README etc.
What I do is that I skip the 'sdist' call and just manually create a
tarball/zip package.
The 'setup.py' script is the one that does all the install work
'sdist' is just a shortcut to
create a tarball.

Be aware that when you test your package you first *must* remove any
old files from a former installed package. This must be done by hand
to prevent Python importing an wrong
module.
(The modules are installed in /usr/lib/python-2.4/site-packages)

Good luck :-)

Stas

Example of a simple Python package:
'Assetml', something I created for the ofset project,
http://www.ofset.org/assetml
The source code, including the setup.py can be seen here,
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/ofset/assetml/pyassetml/

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"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual
 who can labor in freedom."
-Albert Einstein