Make SageNB use `setuptools` instead of `distutils`

[timdumol]

Currently, SageNB makes use of distutils. The standard method of package distribution, though, is  setuptools. This has several advantages, the foremost being a setup.py develop command, which bypasses the need to reinstall the package in order to propagate a change, as well as the ability to upload the package to PyPI with a single command. There is also additional functionality regards packaging, etc.

[timdumol]

This should do it.

[timdumol]

Makes setup.py use setuptools instead of distutils. Depends on #7402 for things to work properly.

[timdumol]

Added necessary .hgignore lines.

[mpatel]

What are your thoughts about

•  On packaging
•  A Few Corrections To “On Packaging”

? I found these links at  Tools of the Modern Python Hacker: Virtualenv, Fabric and Pip.

[timdumol]

Replying to mpatel:

What are your thoughts about

•  On packaging
•  A Few Corrections To “On Packaging”

? I found these links at  Tools of the Modern Python Hacker: Virtualenv, Fabric and Pip.

These tools are orthogonal to usage of setuptools, to note.

I personally make use of Virtualenv and Pip all the time for deployment. They're very useful for keeping one's site-packages clean.

[mpatel]

Thanks for the clarification. What if we use  pip (i.e., pip.py) as SageNB's installer? The uninstall facility might allow us to select among different development versions (and their  requirements) in a clean way. Currently, extraneous files can "accumulate" in site-packages/sagenb until I do rm -rf and reinstall.

Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with distutils, pip, or setuptools.

On #7447: Can we query the installed version of a package with setuptools and/or pip?

[timdumol]

Replying to mpatel:

[...] On #7447: Can we query the installed version of a package with setuptools and/or pip?

I believe something like this should do the trick:

from pkg_resources import Requirement, working_set
version = working_set.find9Requirement.parse('sagenb')).version

[timdumol]

Replying to timdumol:

Replying to mpatel:

[...] On #7447: Can we query the installed version of a package with setuptools and/or pip?

I believe something like this should do the trick:

from pkg_resources import Requirement, working_set
version = working_set.find9Requirement.parse('sagenb')).version

Sorry, I meant working_set.find(Requirement.parse('sagenb')).version

[timdumol]

Replying to mpatel:

Thanks for the clarification. What if we use  pip (i.e., pip.py) as SageNB's installer? The uninstall facility might allow us to select among different development versions (and their  requirements) in a clean way. Currently, extraneous files can "accumulate" in site-packages/sagenb until I do rm -rf and reinstall. ..

Wow, that feature's new. I don't see why not, although it would mean adding another package to Sage.

[mpatel]

I get

sage: from pkg_resources import Requirement, working_set
sage: working_set.find(Requirement.parse('sagenb')).version
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'version'

On using pip: We could just add pip.py, according to  this.

[timdumol]

Replying to mpatel:

I get

sage: from pkg_resources import Requirement, working_set
sage: working_set.find(Requirement.parse('sagenb')).version
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'version'

On using pip: We could just add pip.py, according to  this.

I believe detection of version using pkg_resources requires it be installed by setuptools, i.e., this patch.

[mpatel]

OK, or pip, I suppose. Thanks. I'll put a note at #7447.

[mpatel]

Although I'm not very familar with distutils or setuptools, this works for and looks good to me. A spkg built with spkg-dist installs properly. Moreover, we can query the sagenb version just as indicated in the comments above.

[was]

+1!