[Reproducible-builds] Bug#796196: strip .py suffix from diffoscope within sources repo as well)

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2015, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> > ignore the patch I have submitted (done in a rush, incorrect). But what
> > about the idea in general?

> Umh, but why?

> Shipped package does not have .py.

> Also, why should we move the script to an another directory? (and then we would
> need to set PYTHONPATH to be able to do anything…)

> Can you elaborate on your rationale?

Sure!

1. debian policy on "not having suffix" is not really Debian-specific --
it is a general recommendation.  In your case diffoscope as utility
could later be rewritten in some other language etc, which would then
reflect itself in changing the suffix

2. There is now a dichotomy between how diffoscope should be executed as
installed from debian package (without suffix) and then if someone
installs it using setup.py (with the suffix) or just reading your
documentation (e.g. README)

I do appreciate though the fact that with such a change and relocation
setting of PYTHONPATH is necessary if someone wants to invoke diffoscope
without e.g. 'python setup.py develop' (ideally within a virtualenv).
Within fail2ban we even made some ugly workaround for such invocations,
e.g.

if os.path.exists("diffoscope/__init__.py"):
    sys.path.insert(0, ".")

so someone could invoke directly within source code-base.


Alternative to all of the above could be moving that script entirely
under diffoscope/ module codebase and just establishing entry points with
setuptools' setup() call.  E.g. how we do in e.g. datalad

https://github.com/datalad/datalad/blob/master/setup.py#L30

which would then allow you to craft a test to verify functionality of the code
in the script.

Anyways -- decision is yours to make ;)

Cheers,
-- 
Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Ph.D.
http://neuro.debian.net http://www.pymvpa.org http://www.fail2ban.org
Research Scientist,            Psychological and Brain Sciences Dept.
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834                       Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW:   http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik