On Friday, October 4, 2013, Mike Orr wrote: > Is it better to put a 'tests' directory at the top level of a Python > distribution, or as a subpackage of the package being tested?
I prefer to put tests outside of the package--it seems to me that they shouldn't be part of the installed package. But as you say, it's a matter of taste. Some folks like to be able to install a package, and then run tests from anywhere. Another factor is how folks install packages. If users install a package with pip, they don't (easily) have the full source distro. If you want those folks to be able to run the tests, then they should be in the package. > And for > documentation directories (Sphinx)? Those I'd leave out of the package, but again, probably taste. > Is anyone using the wheel distribution format yet (bist_wheel)? I haven't seen much (any)use yet ... But we need to start--we still need to get the kinks worked out, and that won't happen if no one uses it. > Does it scale between generic pure Python distributions (that > would like one distribution file for all platforms and several Python > versions) and platform-specific/version-specific distributions? Yes, it does. A Wheel is just a zip of what would get Installed in site-packages, so if a package is pure-python, single source, it should work anywhere the code works. There is a meta-data and naming standard that supports specifying what versions, platforms, etc are supported. Of course, packages with compiled extensions will need to build a wheel for each platform. See: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/ For the details. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, PhD Python Language Consulting - Teaching - Scientific Software Development - Desktop GUI and Web Development - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython
