How to test if packaging of the application works. The easy solution would be to use testpypi site. I myself had used it only very few times. But this post I’ll keep it as a documentation/reference for myself for any future activities.

Short version

In short what to do(to use testpypi):

  • Create setup.py

  • Create account in PyPi website

  • Create ~/.pypirc file

  • Register the package:

python setup.py register -r testpypitest

  • Build binary package and upload the package

python setup.py bdist upload -r testpypitest

Long version:

How to create a setup.py script:

Create a sample project:

<root>
      |---hello.py
      |---setup.py

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    name = 'hello',
    version = '0.1',
    url = 'http://testpackage.com'
    author = 'Author Name',
    author_email = 'iam@author.com',
    py_modules = ['hello'],
    entry_points = '''
        [console_scripts]
        hello=hello:hello
    '''
)

Arguements given to the setup function are basically some metadata, of the project.

name : Name of the project
version : Version of the project
url : Url for the project
packages : List of created packages to be included in the package build
py_modules : All the individual python files to be included
install_requires : External packages required
entry_points : This gives a maping of the exe name to the funtion inside out module

Details regarding other options can be found here.

If we had a complete package with multiple modules in it:

<root>
      |--- testPackage
      |    |
      |    |--- __init__.py
      |    |--- module1.py
      |    |--- module2.py
      |   
      |--- setup.py

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    name = 'test_package',
    version = '0.1',
    url = 'http://testpackage.com'
    author = 'Author Name',
    author_email = 'iam@author.com',
    packages = ['testPackage'],
    include_package_data = True,
    install_requires = [],
    entry_points = '''
        [console_scripts]
        hello=module1:hello
    ''',
)

Creating ~/.pypirc file:

[distutils]
index-servers=
    pypi
    pypitest

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

Registering, building and uploading the package binary

Once we have all pre-requisite setup done, now we’ll go forward to registering and uploading the package to TestPyPi site.

python setup.py register -r testpypitest
python setup.py bdist upload -r testpypitest

if the building a binary distribution(option: bdist) and uploading the binary package(option: upload) are not used in a chaining way it could result the error as given below. So we will chain the commands and create the binary distribution and upload it:

[abijith@abijithkp home]$ python setup.py upload -r pypitest
running upload
error: No dist file created in earlier command

Updating the code and making new releases

We have to increase the version number before updating

Deleting the package from PyPi index

To delete the project, login to your testpypi account. After selecting your account, remove the package. The site wil lask for confirmation.