Thanks for moving the discussion to this forum, where it's better suited. I'll reprise my existing reply again here for this new thread.
Olof Bjarnason <[email protected]> writes: > I'm new at the mailing list. I write small games in Python/PyGame. I > want to find a way to make a downloadable package/installer/script to > put on my webpage, especially for Ubuntu users. The primary means of distributing your work to the outside world should, first, be a working Distutils ‘sdist’ (“source distribution”). This allows the work to be installed via ‘python ./setup.py install’, with installation options customisable by those users who want to do so. An important set of users who might (read “will”) want to customise installation options is that set of users who can package your work for specific distributions. They will take the Distutils configuration as a starting point, and apply OS-specific packaging from that point. You would do well to be familiar with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard <URL:http://www.pathname.com/fhs/> and specifications for desktop applications <URL:http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications> as they apply to whatever programs you're making. Many aspects of these (Especially of the FHS) are taken care of for you by the Distutils infrastructure, but many are not. > I've skimmed a couple of tutorials on how to generate .deb-files, but, > wow, it's a whole new skill set to do that! Right. It's a separate body of research, learning, and discipline to make packages that operate smoothly on a particular operating system. If you're not interested in that, please don't do a half-hearted job; instead, focus on making a great program, and leave the job of making a great package to someone better placed to do it. > Does anyone have any hint on a more economic way of creating > single-file distribution packages for Python+PyGame projects? Maybe > some GUI-tool that automates the .deb file creation process, but > targetting Python specifically and not C++. Those tools that exist do more harm than good, in my opinion: they either do very little to help, or they necessarily make guesses about the right thing to do. The policies and specifications change from time to time, and such automated tools cannot hope to be both comprehensive and up-to-date. As someone who has some familiarity with the OS packaging process, I would beg you not to make OS-specific packages without a good, current understanding of the OS packaging policy you're targeting. If that doesn't sound like fun, just concentrate on making your program great, standards-compliant, and responsive to bug reports — especially from OS package maintainers. That will make it much more attractive and give a much better change of having a good range of OS-specific packages. -- \ “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” | `\ —Melvin Kranzberg's First Law of Technology | _o__) | Ben Finney _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
