Home / ubuntu / Questions / 142375
Accepted
jokerdino
Asked: 2012-05-27 00:11:06 +0800 CST

How do I package a python app for ppa?

  • 772

I am planning to package FBuntu into PPA for easier distribution.

The nature of this app is that the user has to make specific edits to the auth.py file to make it work and hence I am stuck from proceeding any further.

A default first couple of lines of auth.py looks like this:

import facebook

class facebookAuthentication:
    def __init__(self):
        url = "https://..."
        self.parse_url(url)

The user after branching FBuntu from the bazaar, has to manually edit the url with the one you get after authenticating with Facebook. I have no idea on how to make an app be edited after a deb package has been generated.

Any guidance on how to proceed with packaging this would be welcome.

python

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I'm not sure what this question has to do with packaging. Users shouldn't have to be editing the python files directly, and of course would need to be root to do so to installed one. What you really want is a proper conf file installed to the users home directory. Something like:

    import os
import ConfigParser

try:
    import xdg.BaseDirectory
except ImportError:
    home = os.environ.get('HOME')
    xdg_config_home = os.path.join(home, '.config/')
else:
    xdg_config_home = xdg.BaseDirectory.xdg_config_home

confDir =  os.path.join(xdg_config_home, 'myApp')
confFile =  os.path.join(confDir, 'conf.ini')

config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()

if os.path.isfile(confFile):
    config.read(confFile)
    print "The URL is " + config.get('Section', 'url')
else:
    print "URL not set. Please edit " + confFile
    if not os.path.exists(confDir):
        os.makedirs(confDir)
    config.add_section('Section')
    config.set('Section', 'url', ' ')
    with open(confFile, 'wb') as confFile:
        config.write(confFile)

    Of course, if this is a GUI app this is still a bit much for the user. You might want to implement a preferences window.

    • 3

  2. Because of your "very specific url" comment I gather using gwibber is not an option.

    I maintain a couple year old python application originally put together with Quickly. Even if you don't want to use Quickly to put together your app, Quickly uses a modified setup.py file to modify a very small Python module. As the app. is built setup.py is called from the make sequence (usual) and a modification to setup.py changes one small but important detail regarding whether the program has been installed or whether it is being tested. I suppose you could use the same approach to change a different kind of detail.

    Still, leaving an application generalized and having it read a config (preference) file would be the standard way to customize a program's operation, if at all possible. So if you can use andrewsomething's suggetion I think that would be better.

    • 0