A project structure

This chapter explains a full Python project structure. What kind of directory layout you can use and how make release a software to the world.

We will call our example project factorial.

$ mkdir factorial
$ cd factorial/

Primary code

The name of the Python module will be myfact, so we will create the directory next.

$ mkdir myfact

The primary code will be in a file called fact.py

"myfact module"

def factorial(num):
    """
    Returns the factorial value of the given number.

    :arg num: Interger value of whose factorial we will calculate.

    :return: The value of the the factorial or -1 in case negative value passed.
    """
    if num >= 0:
        if num == 0:
            return 1
        return num * factorial(num -1)
    else:
        return -1

We also have a __init__.py file for the module.

from fact import factorial
__all__ = [factorial, ]

We also added a README.rst file. So, the directory structure looks like

$ ls
myfact  README.rst
$ ls myfact/
fact.py  __init__.py

MANIFEST.in

Now we have to write a MANIFEST.in file which will be used to find out which all files will be part of the source tar ball of the project at the time of using sdist command.

include *.py
include README.rst

If you want to exclude some file, you can use exclude statements in this file.

Installing python-setuptools package

You have to install python-setuptools package in your system. For this we are using a virtualenv (not showing the steps here)

$ pip install setuptools

setup.py

Finally we have to write a setup.py which then can be used to create a source tarball or installing the software.

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Factorial project"""
from setuptools import find_packages, setup

setup(name = 'factorial',
    version = '0.1',
    description = "Factorial module.",
    long_description = "A test module for our book.",
    platforms = ["Linux"],
    author="Kushal Das",
    author_email="kushaldas@gmail.com",
    url="http://pymbook.readthedocs.org/en/latest/",
    license = "MIT",
    packages=find_packages()
    )

name is the name of the project, version is the release version. You can easily understand description and long_description. platforms is a list of the platforms this module can work on. find_packages is a special function which can find all modules under your source directory.

Usage of setup.py

To create a source release one execute the following command.

$ python setup.py sdist
running sdist
running egg_info
creating factorial.egg-info
writing factorial.egg-info/PKG-INFO
writing top-level names to factorial.egg-info/top_level.txt
writing dependency_links to factorial.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
writing manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
writing manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
running check
creating factorial-0.1
creating factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
creating factorial-0.1/myfact
making hard links in factorial-0.1...
hard linking MANIFEST.in -> factorial-0.1
hard linking README.rst -> factorial-0.1
hard linking setup.py -> factorial-0.1
hard linking factorial.egg-info/PKG-INFO -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/dependency_links.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/top_level.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking myfact/__init__.py -> factorial-0.1/myfact
hard linking myfact/fact.py -> factorial-0.1/myfact
Writing factorial-0.1/setup.cfg
creating dist
Creating tar archive
removing 'factorial-0.1' (and everything under it)

One can see the tarball under dist directory.

$ ls dist/
factorial-0.1.tar.gz

Note

Remember to use a virtualenv while trying to install the code :)

To install from the source use the following command.

$ python setup.py install

Python Package Index (PyPI)

Do you remember the pip command we are using still now? Ever thought from where those packages are coming from? The answer is PyPI. It is a repository of software for the Python programming language.

For our example, we will use the test server of PyPI which is https://testpypi.python.org/pypi

Creating account

First register yourself in this link. You will receive an email with a link, go to that link and confirm your registration.

Your account details genrally stay inside a file called .pypirc under your home directory. The content of the file will look like

[distutils]
index-servers =
    pypi

[pypi]
repository: https://testpypi.python.org/pypi
username: <username>
password: <password>

Replace <username> and <password> with your newly created account details.

Note

Remember to change the name of the project to something else in the `setup.py`to test following instructions.

Registering your project

Next we will register our project to the PyPI service. This is done using the register command. We will also use -r to point it to the test server.

$ python setup.py register -r https://testpypi.python.org/pypi
running register
running egg_info
writing factorial.egg-info/PKG-INFO
writing top-level names to factorial.egg-info/top_level.txt
writing dependency_links to factorial.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
reading manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
writing manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
running check
Registering factorial to https://testpypi.python.org/pypi
Server response (200): OK

Uploading your project

Now finally we can upload our project to the PyPI server using upload command. Remember that this command needs to be invoked immediately after you build the source/binary distribution files.

$ python setup.py sdist upload -r https://testpypi.python.org/pypi
running sdist
running egg_info
writing factorial.egg-info/PKG-INFO
writing top-level names to factorial.egg-info/top_level.txt
writing dependency_links to factorial.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
reading manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
writing manifest file 'factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
running check
creating factorial-0.1
creating factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
creating factorial-0.1/myfact
making hard links in factorial-0.1...
hard linking MANIFEST.in -> factorial-0.1
hard linking README.rst -> factorial-0.1
hard linking setup.py -> factorial-0.1
hard linking factorial.egg-info/PKG-INFO -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/SOURCES.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/dependency_links.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking factorial.egg-info/top_level.txt -> factorial-0.1/factorial.egg-info
hard linking myfact/__init__.py -> factorial-0.1/myfact
hard linking myfact/fact.py -> factorial-0.1/myfact
Writing factorial-0.1/setup.cfg
Creating tar archive
removing 'factorial-0.1' (and everything under it)
running upload
Submitting dist/factorial-0.1.tar.gz to https://testpypi.python.org/pypi
Server response (200): OK

Now if you visit the site, you will find your project is ready to be used by others.