Provide OS packages for bfg

[jimporter]

To make life easier for users, we should provide installable packages for bfg. While setuptools is helpful, users should be able to use their OS's packager. We want the following:

• [ ] Linux
  • [ ] Red Hat (.rpm): distutils
  • [x] Debian (.deb): stdeb
• [ ] Windows (.exe): py2exe
  • [ ] Chocolatey
• [ ] OS X (.app): py2app
  • [ ] Homebrew

[refi64]

For Windows, you still need an installer. There's a distutils plugin on PyPI for Inno Setup.

[refi64]

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/innosetup

It even works with py2exe.

There's also InnoPython, which I wrote, although I don't know if it works under Python 3.

[jimporter]

Thanks, I added that to the summary. I'll have to decide if I want to support Python 3 eventually. Currently, it's Python 2.7 only, but there's a bfg9000_required_version that also lets you specify the required Python version, so I could see people eventually requiring Python 3 for their build.bfg files.

[jimporter]

Moving this to 0.2, since it's not really essential for a first version, and otherwise I'll never actually finish 0.1.

[nlhepler]

@jimporter, if I could add a voice here, I'm a supporter of py3 over py2, for various reasons. I haven't seen many reasons why we couldn't support both, especially with the help of six.

[jimporter]

My only concern with supporting Py3 is that users who have bfg-with-py3 installed and try to build someone else's project made with bfg-with-py2 might run into issues. However, I'm probably going to support Py3 anyway. I think the only part I need to fix is eliminating basestring everywhere.

[nlhepler]

That's a fair point, though I would also say that if anyone is doing something in their bfg files that's incompatible between py2 and py3 (at least w/o six), it's probably already brittle.. We could just make a large public recommendation that .bfg-authors be mindful of compatibility.

[tomjakubowski]

On OS X you should probably package for homebrew; I don't see how a build file generator would work as a .app unless you added a GUI for it.

Homebrew have some pretty straightforward guidelines for packaging Python applications (including those that have dependencies) here: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Python-for-Formula-Authors.md

And here's a relatively small example formula that follows those guidelines, if you're curious: https://github.com/Oblong/homebrew-tools/blob/master/obi.rb

[tomjakubowski]

You might also be able to build an installer package (.pkg), but I know nothing about that.

[jimporter]

That sounds like a good idea, thanks! I don't know much about OS X, aside from that I use Homebrew for installing crap for the CI builds for bfg. It seems like the de facto solution for this stuff. If there are other super-popular alternatives to Homebrew, I'll look into them too if someone points them out.

[tomjakubowski]

I'm happy to volunteer time to work on packaging bfg9000 for Homebrew. I'll be in touch.

[tomjakubowski]

Something you may not be aware of: https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm

(pretty funny that fpm doesn't dogfood and you have to gem install fpm to use it…)

[jimporter]

Hm, interesting. Python already handles .rpms and .debs pretty well, so I might not need that, but perhaps it would help for OS X...

[jimporter]

Ok, I now have working .debs and a PPA for Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/~jimporter/+archive/ubuntu/testing

When I produce an actual release, I'll put all the necessary packages into a "stable" PPA.

[jimporter]

Oh also, if anyone has an opinion on how they'd like to see me distribute a Python 3-backed version of bfg, let me know. Right now, the bfg9000 package on my PPA is Python 2-backed, but I could add a bfg9000-python3 package. Or I could have bfg9000-python2 and bfg9000-python3 and then make a virtual bfg9000 package?

[jimporter]

Moving this out to 0.4 since I want to handle #48 before I get too far on this...