Please ship also CHANGELOG and prettytable_test.py

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hello,
it would be useful to have also the mentioned files in the released tarball: a 
changelog is handy to users to know what changes between releases, and a test 
unit is handy for packagers to verity the module is working all fine.

Cheers,
Sandro

Original issue reported on code.google.com by sandro.tosi on 6 May 2012 at 7:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Sandro,

Including CHANGELOG is no problem at all.  I will do that soon.

Regarding the tests: I am happy to ship these but I wondered if you had any 
advice on how best to go about it?  If I just add it to the py_modules list in 
setup.py, then people who have installed it will be able to do "import 
prettytable_test", right?  For some reason it feels weird to me to have the 
unit tests be so easily accessible.  But maybe this is normal?  I have read 
this article: 
http://as.ynchrono.us/2007/12/filesystem-structure-of-python-project_21.html, 
which recommends having a test sub-package of your main package.  But right now 
PrettyTable is just a module, not a package, and I am loathe to change that 
since it will break existing import statements, and also because I feel it is 
overkill for such a simple library.

Since you package many Python projects for Debian I thought you may have some 
insight?

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 6 May 2012 at 9:56

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Luke,
sadly the Python ecosystem is very fragmented when we talk about how to run 
tests. Some have a test/ directory, so just have a module in their package so 
running

 python -c "import module; module.test()"

would work, and so on.

given setuptools supports it, it would be cool if you can fill the missing bits 
for letting

 python setup.py test

works. This patch just makes the trick:

Index: setup.py
===================================================================
--- setup.py    (revision 56)
+++ setup.py    (working copy)
@@ -17,5 +17,6 @@
     author='Luke Maurits',
     author_email='luke@maurits.id.au',
     url='http://code.google.com/p/prettytable',
-    py_modules=['prettytable']
+    py_modules=['prettytable'],
+    test_suite='prettytable_test'
 )

as for installation, I don't think it is worth installing the tests, but being 
able to run them when you have the tarball unpacked is nice.

Cheers,
Sandro

Original comment by sandro.tosi on 12 May 2012 at 8:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Sandro,

I had no idea that setuptools had the test_suite option!  Thanks very much.  I 
agree that packaging the tests and having the ability to run them with "python 
setup.py test", but not actually installing the tests into site-packages 
anywhere is a good way to go about things.  I'll get this done soon and upload 
the new packages to PyPi.  I'll let you know when I've done so so you can make 
Debian packages.

Thanks!
Luke

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 16 May 2012 at 12:48

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Okay, I've uploaded the new packages.  These should have CHANGELOG and 
prettytable_test.py in them as requested.  Please let me know if everything is 
okay, then I can close this Issue.

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 16 May 2012 at 2:50

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Mh sorry but where did you uploaded it? aaaah I see, you've overwritten your 
previous 0.6 release. Please, don't do that! we won't notice that a new release 
was /released/ if you don't bump the version too.

Do you think it's possible to restore the original 0.6 version and release a 
completely new version, something like 0.6.1 ?

Original comment by sandro.tosi on 17 May 2012 at 8:40

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It would be possible to replace the old packages and then release these new 
ones as 0.6.1, but I think I would need some convincing that this is actually 
the right thing to do.  I don't really think of the new packages as 
constituting a new "release".  I mean, the actual PrettyTable code itself has 
not changed one byte.  All that's different is that the tarball now includes a 
few extra non-source files.  To my mind this is a "new packaging", or 
"repackaging" of an "old release".  I sort of feel like calling it 0.6.1 would 
confuse people, since 99% of users will not even notice a change.

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 18 May 2012 at 2:13

[GoogleCodeExporter]

the problem is that once you publish something on the web, in particular for 
software releases, it's "frozen" any further changes require a completely new 
release.

For example, if you were to fix a typo in a comment (and you want to do that 
because it's embarassing of some "urgent" matter), would you release a new 
version or just "update" the current one?

How can anyone notice you've released a new version, while it's actually just 
an "updated" version? I would not. I wouldn't have noticed you've release a 
tarball with the doc in if I didn't really know that you did it and I searched 
hard to understand where it is, given I was looking at the same version I 
already downloaded some time before.

People are used to versions, because they mean something to them, they mean a 
specific point in the software evolution that's unchangable, and from that on 
you'll have higher versions releases.

I might not be the best speaker (writer? ;) ) but I hope at least you have 
shown some opinion on why for any change, a new (different) release is needed.

Original comment by sandro.tosi on 21 May 2012 at 8:15

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Sandro,

Okay, I will make a 0.6.1 release and restore the previous 0.6 packages, but 
probably not for about a week since I am very busy with a conference deadline 
at the moment.

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 27 May 2012 at 12:15

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Sandro,

This ended up working out quite nicely, since I got a bug report about unicode 
in PrettyTable 0.6, so I would have ended up having to do a 0.6.1 release 
anyway!  I've released the new one today, and replaced the 0.6 packages on PyPi 
with ones which do not contain CHANGELOG etc., as they originally were.

I'm going to close this issue now, since the originally problem is now fixed 
(as CHANGELOG and prettytable_test.py are now in the 0.6.1 source distribution) 
and the 0.6 packages have been restored to their original form.

Original comment by luke@maurits.id.au on 3 Jun 2012 at 11:09

• Changed state: Fixed

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks a lot Luke!

Original comment by sandro.tosi on 6 Jun 2012 at 5:24