Most Python developers have written at least one tool, script, library or framework that others would find useful. My goal in this article is to make the process of open-sourcing existing Python code as clear and painless as possible. And I don't simply mean, "create GitHub repo, git push , post on Reddit, and call it a day." By the end of this article, you'll be able to take an existing code base and transform it into an open source project that encourages both use and contribution.

While every project is different, there are some parts of the process of open-sourcing existing code that are common to all Python projects. In the vein of another popular series I've written, "Starting a Django Project The Right Way," I'll outline the steps I've found to be necessary when open-sourcing a Python project.

Update (Aug 17): Thanks to @pydanny for alerting me about the existence of Cookiecutter, an awesome project by @audreyr. I've added a section on it to the end of this article. Be sure to check out Audrey's awesome project!

Update 2 (Aug 18): Thanks to @ChristianHeimes (and others) for suggesting a section on tox . Christian also reminded me about PEP 440 and had some great suggestions for other minor improvements, all of which have been implemented.

Tools and Concepts

In particular, there are a number of tools and concepts I've found useful or necessary. I'll cover each of the topics below, including the precise commands you'll need to run and configuration values you'll need to set. The goal is to make the entire process clear and simple.

Project layout (directory structure) setuptools and the setup.py file git for version control GitHub for project management GitHub's "Issues" for the following: bug tracking feature requests planned features release/version management git-flow for git workflow py.test for unit testing tox for testing standardization Sphinx for auto-generated HTML documentation TravisCI for continuous testing integration ReadTheDocs for continuous documentation integration Cookiecutter to automate these steps when starting your next project

Project Layout

When setting up a project, the layout (or directory structure) is important to get right. A sensible layout means that potential contributors don't have to spend forever hunting for a piece of code; file locations are intuitive. Since we're dealing with an existing project, it means you'll probably need to move some stuff around.

Let's start at the top. Most projects have a number of top-level files (like setup.py , README.md , requirements.txt , etc). There are then three directories that every project should have:

A docs directory containing project documentation A directory named with the project's name which stores the actual Python package A test directory in one of two places Under the package directory containing test code and resources As a stand-alone top level directory

To get a better sense of how your files should be organized, here's a simplified snapshot of the layout for one of my projects, sandman:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 $ pwd ~/code/sandman $ tree . | - LICENSE | - README.md | - TODO.md | - docs | | -- conf.py | | -- generated | | -- index.rst | | -- installation.rst | | -- modules.rst | | -- quickstart.rst | | -- sandman.rst | - requirements.txt | - sandman | | -- __init__.py | | -- exception.py | | -- model.py | | -- sandman.py | | -- test | | -- models.py | | -- test_sandman.py | - setup.py

As you can see, there are some top level files, a docs directory ( generated is an empty directory where sphinx will put the generated documentation), a sandman directory, and a test directory under sandman .

setuptools and the setup.py File

The setup.py file you've likely seen in other packages is used by the distutils package for the installation of Python packages. It's an important file for any project, as it contains information on versioning, package requirements, the project description that will be used on PyPI, and your name and contact information, among many other things. It allows packages to be searched for and installed in a programmatic way, providing meta-data and instructions to tools that do so.

The setuptools package (really a set of enhancements for distutils ) simplifies the building and distribution of Python packages. A Python package that was packaged with setuptools should be indistinguishable from one packaged with distutils . There's really no reason not to use it.

setup.py should live in your project's root directory. The most important section of setup.py is the call to setuptools.setup , where all the meta-information about the package lives. Here's the complete contents of setup.py from sandman:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 from __future__ import print_function from setuptools import setup, find_packages from setuptools.command.test import test as TestCommand import io import codecs import os import sys import sandman here = os.path.abspath ( os.path.dirname ( __file__ )) def read ( *filenames, **kwargs ) : encoding = kwargs.get ( 'encoding' , 'utf-8' ) sep = kwargs.get ( 'sep' , '

' ) buf = [] for filename in filenames: with io.open ( filename, encoding = encoding ) as f: buf.append ( f.read ()) return sep.join ( buf ) long_description = read ( 'README.txt' , 'CHANGES.txt' ) class PyTest ( TestCommand ) : def finalize_options ( self ) : TestCommand.finalize_options ( self ) self.test_args = [] self.test_suite = True def run_tests ( self ) : import pytest errcode = pytest.main ( self.test_args ) sys.exit ( errcode ) setup ( name = 'sandman' , version = sandman.__version__, url = 'http://github.com/jeffknupp/sandman/' , license = 'Apache Software License' , author = 'Jeff Knupp' , tests_require =[ 'pytest' ] , install_requires =[ 'Flask>=0.10.1' , 'Flask-SQLAlchemy>=1.0' , 'SQLAlchemy==0.8.2' , ] , cmdclass ={ 'test' : PyTest } , author_email = 'jeff@jeffknupp.com' , description = 'Automated REST APIs for existing database-driven systems' , long_description = long_description, packages =[ 'sandman' ] , include_package_data = True, platforms = 'any' , test_suite = 'sandman.test.test_sandman' , classifiers = [ 'Programming Language :: Python' , 'Development Status :: 4 - Beta' , 'Natural Language :: English' , 'Environment :: Web Environment' , 'Intended Audience :: Developers' , 'License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License' , 'Operating System :: OS Independent' , 'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules' , 'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Application Frameworks' , 'Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Dynamic Content' , ] , extras_require ={ 'testing' : [ 'pytest' ] , } )

(thanks to Christian Heimes for the suggestion to make read more idiomatic. I'll in turn let whichever project I stole this code from know...)

Most of the contents are straightforward and could be gleaned from the setuptools documentation, so I'll only touch on the "interesting" parts. Using sandman.__version__ and the method of getting long_description (taken from the setup.py of other projects, though I can't remember which ones) reduce the amount of boilerplate code we need to write. Instead of maintaining the project's version in three places ( setup.py , the package itself via package.__version__ , and the documentation), we can always use the package's version to populate the version parameter in setup .

long_description is the document used by PyPI as the description on your project's PyPI page. As there is another file, README.md with almost the exact same content, I use pandoc to automatically generate README.rst from README.md . Thus, we can simply read the file README.rst and use that as the value for long_description .

py.test (discussed below) has a special entry ( class PyTest ) to allow python setup.py test to work correctly. That code snippet was taken directly from the py.test documentation.

Everything else is in the file is simply setting values for the setup parameters described in the documentation.

Other setup.py parameters

There are some setup arguments that sandman has no use for, but your package might. For example, you may be distributing a script that you'd like your user to be able to execute from the command line. In the example above, that script would only be installed in the normal site-packages location along with the rest of your code. There would be no (easy) way for the user to run it after it was installed.

For that reason, setup can take a scripts argument that specifies Python scripts that should be installed as such. To install a script called go_foo.py from your package, the call to setup would include the line:

1 scripts = [ 'go_foo.py' ],

Just make sure you put the relative path to your script, not just its name (e.g. scripts = ['scripts/foo_scripts/go_foo.py'] ). Also, your script should begin with a "shebang" line with "python" in it, like:

1 #! /usr/bin/env python

distutils will automatically replace this line with the current interpreter location during installation.

If your package is more complex than the simple one discussed here, take a look at both the setuptools documentation and "Distributing Python Modules" from the official documentation. Between the two, you should be able to straighten out any issues you might have encountered.

Source Control With Git, Project Management with GitHub

In "Starting a Django Project The Right Way," I suggest either git or mercurial for version control. For a project meant to be both shared and contributed to, there's really only one choice: git. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that not only is the use of git necessary, you'll also need to use GitHub to maintain your project if you want people to actually use and contribute to it.

It's not meant to be an inflammatory statement (though no doubt many will take issue with it). Rather, for better or worse, git and GitHub have become the de-facto standard for Open Source projects. GitHub is the site potential contributors are most likely to be registered on and familiar with. That, I believe, is not a point to be taken lightly.

Create a README.md File

The project description for repos on GitHub is taken from a file in the project's root directory: README.md . This file should contain the following pieces of information:

A description of your project

Links to the project's ReadTheDocs page

A TravisCI button showing the state of the build

"Quickstart" documentation (how to quickly install and use your project)

A list of non-Python dependencies (if any) and how to install them

It may sound silly, but this is an important file. It's quite likely to be the first thing both prospective users and contributors read about your project. Take some time to write a clear description and make use of GFM (GitHubFlavoredMarkdown) to make it look somewhat attractive. You can actually create/edit this file right on GitHub with a live-preview editor if you're not comfortable writing documents in raw Markdown.

We haven't yet covered the second and third items in the list yet (ReadTheDocs and TravisCI). You'll find these discussed below.

Using the "Issues" Page

Like most things in life, the more you put into GitHub, the more you get out of it. Since users will be using it to file bug reports anyway, making use of GitHub's "Issues" page to track feature requests and enhancements just makes sense.

More importantly, it allows potential contributors to both see a list of things they might implement and automatically manages the pull request workflow in a reasonably elegant manner. GitHub issues and their comments can be cross-linked with commits, other issues in your project, issues in other projects, etc. This makes the "Issues" page a good place to keep all of the information related to bug fixes, enhancements, and feature requests.

Make sure to keep "Issues" up to date and to at least briefly respond to new issues in a timely manner. As a contributor, there's nothing more demotivating than fixing a bug and watching as it languishes on the issues page, waiting to be merged.

A Sensible git Workflow With git-flow

To make things easier on both yourself and contributors, I suggest using the very popular git-flow model of branching.

Quick Overview

The develop is the branch you'll be doing most of your work off of; it's also the branch that represents the code to be deployed in the next release. feature branches represent non-trivial features and fixes that have not yet been deployed (a completed feature branch is merged back into develop ). Updating master is done through the creation of a release .

Installation

Install git-flow by following the instructions for your platform here.

Once installed, you can migrate your existing project with the command

1 $ git flow init

Branch Details

You'll be asked a number of configuration questions by the script. The default values suggested by git-flow are fine to use. You may notice your default branch is set to develop . More on that in a moment. Let's take a step back and describe the git-flow... erm, flow, in a bit more detail. The easiest way to do so is to discuss the various branches and types of branches in the model.

Master

master is always "production ready" code. Commits are never made directly to master . Rather, code on master only gets there after a production release branch is created and "finished" (more on that in a sec). Thus the code on master is always able to be released to production. Also, master is always in a predictable state, so you never need to worry if master (and thus production) has changes one of your other branches doesn't.

Develop

Most of your work is done on the develop branch. This branch contains all of the completed features and bug fixes yet to be released; nightly builds or continuous integration servers should target develop , as it represents the code that will be included in the next release.

For one-off commits, feel free to commit to develop directly.

Feature

For larger features, a feature branch should be created. feature branches are created off of develop . They can be small enhancements for the next release or further out changes that, nonetheless, need to be worked on now. To start work on a new feature, use:

1 $ git flow feature start <feature name>

This creates a new branch: feature/<feature name> . Commits are then made to this branch as normal. When the feature is complete and ready to be released to production, it should be merged back into develop using the following command:

1 $ git flow feature finish <feature name>

This merges the code into develop and deletes the feature/<feature name> branch.

Release

A release branch is created from develop when you're ready to begin a production release. Create one using the following command:

1 $ git flow release start <release number>

Note that this is the first time a version number for the release is created. All completed and ready to be released features must already be on develop (and thus feature finish 'ed). After your release branch is created, release your code. Any small bug fixes needed after the release are made directly to the release/<release number> branch. Once it has settled down and no more bug fixes seem necessary, run the following command:

1 $ git flow release finish <release number>

This merges your release/<release number> changes back into both master and develop , meaning you never need to worry about either of those branches lacking changes that are in production (perhaps as the result of a quick bug fix).

Hotfix

While potentially useful, hotfix branches are, I would guess, little used in the real world. A hotfix is like a feature branch off of master : if you've already closed a release branch but realize there are vital changes that need to be released, create a hotfix branch off of master (at the tag created during $ git flow release finish <release number> ) like so:

1 $ git flow hotfix start <release number>

After you make your changes and bump your version number, finalize the hotfix via

1 $ git flow hotfix finish <release number>

This, like a release branch (since it essentially is a type of release branch), commits the changes to both master and develop .

The reason I assume they're rarely used is because there is already a mechanism for making changes to released code: committing to an un- finish ed release branch. Sure, in the beginning, teams may git flow release finish ... too early, only to find they need to make some quick changes the next day. Over time, though, they'll settle on a reasonable amount of time for a release branch to remain open and, thus, won't have a need for hotfix branches. The only other time you would need a hotfix branch is if you needed a new "feature" in production immediately, without picking up the changes already in develop . That strikes me as something that happens (hopefully) very rarely.

virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

Ian Bicking's virtualenv tool has become the de-facto standard mechanism for isolating Python environments. Its purpose is simple: if you have a number of Python projects on a single machine, each with different dependencies (perhaps with dependencies on different versions of the same package), managing the dependencies in a single Python installation is nigh impossible.

virtualenv creates "virtual" Python installations, each with their own, segregated, site-packages . distribute and pip are also installed in such a way that pip install correctly installs packages to the virtualenv rather than the system Python installation. Switching back and forth between your virtualenv is a one-command process.

A separate tool, Doug Hellmann's virtualenvwrapper , makes creating and managing multiple virtualenv s easier. Let's go ahead and install both now:

1 2 3 4 $ pip install ` virtualenvwrapper ` ... Successfully installed ` virtualenvwrapper ` ` virtualenv ` ` virtualenv ` -clone stevedore Cleaning up...

As you can see, the latter has a dependency on the former, so simply installing virtualenvwrapper is sufficient. Note that if you're using Python 3, PEP-405, which gives Python native support for virtual environments through the venv package and pyvenv command, was implemented in Python 3.3. You should use that instead of the tools mentioned above.

Once you've installed virtualenvwrapper , you'll need to add a line to your .zhsrc file (or .bashrc file for bash users):

1 $ echo "source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> ~/.zshrc

This adds a number of useful commands to your shell (remember to source your .zshrc to actually make them available for the first time). While you can create a virtualenv directly with the mkvirtualenv command, creating a "project" using mkproject [OPTIONS] DEST_DIR is usually more useful. Since we have an existing project, however, we'll simply create a new virtualenv for our project. We can do this with a simple command:

$ mkvirtualenv ossproject New python executable in ossproject/bin/python Installing setuptools............done. Installing pip...............done. ( ossproject ) $

You'll notice your shell prompt is now prepended by the name of your virtualenv (which I called "ossproject", but obviously you can use whatever name you'd like). Now anything installed via pip install is installed to the site-packages of your virtualenv .

To stop working on your project and switch back to the system installation, use the deactivate command. You should see the virtualenv name that was prepended to your shell prompt disappear. To resume work on your project, run $ workon <project name> and you'll be back in your virtualenv .

Aside from simply creating the virtualenv for your project, you'll use it to do one more thing: generate your requirements.txt file. pip is capable of installing all of project's dependencies by using a requirements file and the -r flag. To create this file, run the following command within your virtualenv (once your code is working with the virtualenv , that is):

1 ( ossproject ) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt

You'll get a nice list of all of the requirements for your project, which can later be used by the setup.py file to list your dependencies. One note here: I often change the '==' to '>=' in requirements.txt to say "any version of this package after the one I'm working on." Whether or not you should/need to do this is project specific, but I just thought I'd point it out.

Commit requirements.txt to your git repo. In addition, you can now add the packages listed there as the value for the install_requirements argument to distutils.setup in setup.py . Doing that now will ensure that, when we later upload the package to PyPI. It can be pip install ed with automatically resolved dependencies.

Testing With py.test

In the Python automated testing ecosystem, there are two main alternatives to the (quite usable) Python standard library unittest package: nose and py.test. Both extend unittest to make it easier to work with while adding additional functionality. Truthfully, either is a fine choice. I happen to prefer py.test for a few reasons:

Support for setuptools/distutils projects python setup.py test still works

Support for "normal" assert statements (rather than needing to remember all the jUnit-style assert functions)

statements (rather than needing to remember all the jUnit-style assert functions) Less boilerplate

Support for multiple testing styles unittest doctest nose tests



Note

If you already have an automated testing solution, feel free to continue using it and skip this section. Be warned that later sections may assume testing is done using py.test, which may affect configuration values.

Test Setup

In the test directory, wherever you decided it should live, create a file called test_<project_name>.py . py.test's test discovery mechanism will treat any file with the test_ prefix as a test file (unless told otherwise).

What you put in that file is largely up to you. Writing tests is a giant topic and outside of the scope of this article. The important thing, however, is that the tests are useful to both you and potential contributors. It should be clear what functionality each test is exercising. Tests should be written in the same "style" so that a potential contributor doesn't have to guess which of the three styles of testing used in your project he/she should use.

Test Coverage

Automated test coverage is a contentious topic. Some believe it to be a meaningless metric that gives false security. Others find it genuinely useful. At the very least, I would suggest if you already have tests and have never checked your test coverage, do so now as an exercise.

With py.test, we can make use of Ned Batchelder's coverage tool. To do so, $ pip install pytest-cov . If you previously ran your tests like this:

1 $ py.test

you can generate test coverage reports by passing a few additional flags. Below is an example of running sandman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 $ py.test --cov = path/to/package $ py.test --cov = path/to/package --cov-report = term --cov-report = html ====================================================== test session starts ======================================================= platform darwin -- Python 2 .7.5 -- pytest-2.3.5 plugins: cov collected 23 items sandman/test/test_sandman.py ....................... ---------------------------------------- coverage: platform darwin, python 2 .7.5-final-0 ----------------------------------------- Name Stmts Miss Cover -------------------------------------------------- sandman/__init__ 5 0 100 % sandman/exception 10 0 100 % sandman/model 48 0 100 % sandman/sandman 142 0 100 % sandman/test/__init__ 0 0 100 % sandman/test/models 29 0 100 % sandman/test/test_sandman 114 0 100 % -------------------------------------------------- TOTAL 348 0 100 % Coverage HTML written to dir htmlcov =================================================== 23 passed in 1 .14 seconds ===========================================================

Certainly not all of my projects have 100% test coverage (in fact, as you read this, sandman might not have 100% coverage anymore). Getting to 100% was a useful exercise, though. It exposed bugs and opportunities for refactoring I wouldn't have otherwise noticed.

Since, as for the tests themselves, test coverage reports can be generated automatically as part of your continuous integration. If you choose to do so, displaying a badge showing your current test coverage adds a bit of transparency to your project (and high numbers can sometimes encourage others to contribute).

Standardized Testing With Tox

One issue all Python project maintainers face is compatibility. If your goal is to support both Python 2.x and Python 3.x (and, if you currently only support Python 2.x, it should be), how do you make sure your project actually works against all the versions you say you support? After all, when you run your tests, you're only testing the specific interpreter version used to run the tests. It's quite possible that a change you made works fine in Python 2.7.5 but breaks in 2.6 and 3.3.

Luckily, there's a tool dedicated to solving this exact problem. tox provides "standardized testing in Python," and it goes beyond merely running your tests with more than one version of the interpreter. It creates a fully sandboxed environment in which your package and its requirements are installed and tested. If you made a change that works fine when tested directly but the change inadvertently broke your installation, you'll discover that with tox.

tox is configured via an .ini file: tox.ini . It's a very simple file to set up. Here's a minimal tox.ini file taken from the tox documentation:

1 2 3 4 5 6 # content of: tox.ini , put in same dir as setup.py [tox] envlist = py26,py27 [testenv] deps = pytest # install pytest in the venvs commands = py.test # or 'nosetests' or ...

By setting py26 and py27 in the envlist , tox knows that it should run your tests against those versions of the interpreter. There are about a dozen "default" environments that tox supports out of the box, including jython and pypy . tox makes testing against different versions and configurations it would be a crime not to support multiple versions, if only to get to use such an awesome tool.

deps is a list of dependencies for your package. You can even tell tox to install all or some of your dependencies from an alternate PyPI URL. Clearly, quite a bit of thought and work has gone into the project.

Actually running your all of your tests against all of your environments now takes four keystrokes:

1 $ tox

A more complicated setup

My book, "Writing Idiomatic Python", is actually written as a series of Python modules and docstrings. This is done to make sure all the code samples work as intended. As part of my build process, I run tox to make sure the code in any new idioms works correctly. I also occasionally check my test coverage to make sure there are no idioms inadvertently being skipped during testing. As such, my tox.ini is a bit more complicated than the one above. Take a look:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 [tox] envlist = py27, py34 [testenv] deps = pytest coverage pytest-cov setenv = PYTHONWARNINGS=all [pytest] adopts = --doctest-modules python_files = *.py python_functions = test_ norecursedirs = .tox .git [testenv:py27] commands = py.test --doctest-module [testenv:py34] commands = py.test --doctest-module [testenv:py27verbose] basepython = python commands = py.test --doctest-module --cov=. --cov-report term [testenv:py34verbose] basepython = python3.4 commands = py.test --doctest-module --cov=. --cov-report term

Even this config file is pretty straightforward. And the result?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ( idiom ) ~/c/g/idiom git:master >>> tox GLOB sdist-make: /home/jeff/code/github_code/idiom/setup.py py27 inst-nodeps: /home/jeff/code/github_code/idiom/.tox/dist/Writing Idiomatic Python-1.0.zip py27 runtests: commands [ 0 ] | py.test --doctest-module /home/jeff/code/github_code/idiom/.tox/py27/lib/python2.7/site-packages/_pytest/assertion/oldinterpret.py:3: DeprecationWarning: The compiler package is deprecated and removed in Python 3 .x. from compiler import parse, ast, pycodegen =============================================================== test session starts ================================================================ platform linux2 -- Python 2 .7.5 -- pytest-2.3.5 plugins: cov collected 150 items ... ============================================================ 150 passed in 0 .44 seconds ============================================================ py33 inst-nodeps: /home/jeff/code/github_code/idiom/.tox/dist/Writing Idiomatic Python-1.0.zip py33 runtests: commands [ 0 ] | py.test --doctest-module =============================================================== test session starts ================================================================ platform linux -- Python 3 .3.2 -- pytest-2.3.5 plugins: cov collected 150 items ... ============================================================ 150 passed in 0 .62 seconds ============================================================ _____________________________________________________________________ summary ______________________________________________________________________ py27: commands succeeded py33: commands succeeded congratulations : )

(I cut out the list of all the tests it runs from the output). If I want to see the coverage of my tests for an environment, I simply run:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 $ tox -e py33verbose -------------------------------------------------- coverage: platform linux, python 3 .3.2-final-0 -------------------------------------------------- Name Stmts Miss Cover ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ control_structures_and_functions/a_if_statement/if_statement_multiple_lines 11 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/a_if_statement/if_statement_repeating_variable_name 10 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/a_if_statement/make_use_of_pythons_truthiness 20 3 85 % control_structures_and_functions/b_for_loop/enumerate 10 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/b_for_loop/in_statement 10 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/b_for_loop/use_else_to_determine_when_break_not_hit 31 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/functions/2only/2only_use_print_as_function 4 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/functions/avoid_list_dict_as_default_value 22 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/functions/use_args_and_kwargs_to_accept_arbitrary_arguments 39 31 21 % control_structures_and_functions/zexceptions/aaa_dont_fear_exceptions 0 0 100 % control_structures_and_functions/zexceptions/aab_eafp 22 2 91 % control_structures_and_functions/zexceptions/avoid_swallowing_exceptions 17 12 29 % general_advice/dont_reinvent_the_wheel/pypi 0 0 100 % general_advice/dont_reinvent_the_wheel/standard_library 0 0 100 % general_advice/modules_of_note/itertools 0 0 100 % general_advice/modules_of_note/working_with_file_paths 39 1 97 % general_advice/testing/choose_a_testing_tool 0 0 100 % general_advice/testing/separate_tests_from_code 0 0 100 % general_advice/testing/unit_test_your_code 1 0 100 % organizing_your_code/aa_formatting/constants 16 0 100 % organizing_your_code/aa_formatting/formatting 0 0 100 % organizing_your_code/aa_formatting/multiple_statements_single_line 17 0 100 % organizing_your_code/documentation/follow_pep257 6 2 67 % organizing_your_code/documentation/use_inline_documentation_sparingly 13 1 92 % organizing_your_code/documentation/what_not_how 24 0 100 % organizing_your_code/imports/arrange_imports_in_a_standard_order 4 0 100 % organizing_your_code/imports/avoid_relative_imports 4 0 100 % organizing_your_code/imports/do_not_import_from_asterisk 4 0 100 % organizing_your_code/modules_and_packages/use_modules_where_other_languages_use_object 0 0 100 % organizing_your_code/scripts/if_name 22 0 100 % organizing_your_code/scripts/return_with_sys_exit 32 2 94 % working_with_data/aa_variables/temporary_variables 12 0 100 % working_with_data/ab_strings/chain_string_functions 10 0 100 % working_with_data/ab_strings/string_join 10 0 100 % working_with_data/ab_strings/use_format_function 18 0 100 % working_with_data/b_lists/2only/2only_prefer_xrange_to_range 14 14 0 % working_with_data/b_lists/3only/3only_unpacking_rest 16 0 100 % working_with_data/b_lists/list_comprehensions 13 0 100 % working_with_data/ca_dictionaries/dict_dispatch 23 0 100 % working_with_data/ca_dictionaries/dict_get_default 10 1 90 % working_with_data/ca_dictionaries/dictionary_comprehensions 21 0 100 % working_with_data/cb_sets/make_use_of_mathematical_set_operations 25 0 100 % working_with_data/cb_sets/set_comprehensions 12 0 100 % working_with_data/cb_sets/use_sets_to_remove_duplicates 34 6 82 % working_with_data/cc_tuples/named_tuples 26 0 100 % working_with_data/cc_tuples/tuple_underscore 15 0 100 % working_with_data/cc_tuples/tuples 12 0 100 % working_with_data/classes/2only/2only_prepend_private_data_with_underscore 43 43 0 % working_with_data/classes/2only/2only_use_str_for_human_readable_class_representation 18 18 0 % working_with_data/classes/3only/3only_prepend_private_data_with_underscore 45 2 96 % working_with_data/classes/3only/3only_use_str_for_human_readable_class_representation 18 0 100 % working_with_data/context_managers/context_managers 16 7 56 % working_with_data/generators/use_generator_expression_for_iteration 16 0 100 % working_with_data/generators/use_generators_to_lazily_load_sequences 44 1 98 % ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TOTAL 849 146 83 % ============================================================ 150 passed in 1 .73 seconds ============================================================ _____________________________________________________________________ summary ______________________________________________________________________ py33verbose: commands succeeded congratulations : )

That's pretty damn awesome.

setuptools integration

tox can be integrated with setuptools so that python setup.py test runs your tox tests. The following snippet should be put in your setup.py file and is taken directly from the tox documentation:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 from setuptools.command.test import test as TestCommand import sys class Tox ( TestCommand ): def finalize_options ( self ): TestCommand . finalize_options ( self ) self . test_args = [] self . test_suite = True def run_tests ( self ): #import here, cause outside the eggs aren't loaded import tox errcode = tox . cmdline ( self . test_args ) sys . exit ( errcode ) setup ( #..., tests_require = [ 'tox' ], cmdclass = { 'test' : Tox }, )

Now python setup.py test will download tox and run tox . Seriously cool. And a serious time saver.

Documentation with Sphinx

Sphinx is a tool by the pocoo folks. It's used to generate the Python's official documentation and the documentation for almost all other popular Python packages. It was written with idea of making auto-generation of HTML documentation from Python code as easy as possible.

Let the tool do the work

Sphinx has no implicit knowledge of Python programs and how to extract documentation from them. It can only translate reStructured Text files, which means a reStructured Text version of your code's documentation needs to be available for Sphinx to do its work. But maintaining a reStructured Text version of all of your .py files (minus the actual body of functions and classes) is clearly not doable.

Luckily, Sphinx has a javadoc-like extension, called autodoc , which is able to extracted reStructured Text from your code's docstrings. To be able to fully utilize the power of Sphinx and autodoc , you'll need to format your docstrings in a particular manner. In particular, you should make use of Sphinx's Python directives. Here's an example of a function documented using reStructured Text directives, making the resulting HTML documentation much nicer:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 def _validate ( cls , method , resource = None ): """Return ``True`` if the the given *cls* supports the HTTP *method* found on the incoming HTTP request. :param cls: class associated with the request's endpoint :type cls: :class:`sandman.model.Model` instance :param string method: HTTP method of incoming request :param resource: *cls* instance associated with the request :type resource: :class:`sandman.model.Model` or None :rtype: bool """ if not method in cls . __methods__ : return False class_validator_name = 'validate_' + method if hasattr ( cls , class_validator_name ): class_validator = getattr ( cls , class_validator_name ) return class_validator ( resource ) return True

Documentation becomes a bit more work, but the payoff is worth it for your users. Good, accessible documentation sets a usable project apart from a frustrating one.

Sphinx's autodoc extension gives you access to a number of directives that automatically generate documentation from your docstrings.

Installation

Be sure to install Sphinx in your virtualenv , since documentation will be a versioned artifact in your project. Different versions of Sphinx may generate different HTML output. By installing in your virtualenv , you can "upgrade" your documentation in a controlled manner.

We'll be keeping our documentation in the docs directory and the generated documentation in the docs/generated directory. To auto-generate reStructured Text documentation files from your docstring s, run the following command in your project's root directory:

1 $ sphinx-apidoc -F -o docs <package name>

This will create a docs directory with a number of documentation files. In addition, it creates a conf.py file, which is responsible for configuration of your documentation. You'll also see a Makefile , handy for building HTML documentation in one command ( make html ).

Before you actually generate your documentation, be sure you've installed your package locally ( $ python setup.py develop is the easiest way to keep it up to date, though you can use pip as well) or else sphinx-apidoc won't be able to find your package.

Configuration: conf.py

The conf.py file that was created controls many aspects of the documentation that's generated. It's well documented itself, so I'll briefly touch on just two items.

version and release

First, make sure to keep your version and release values up-to-date. Those numbers will be displayed as part of the generated documentation, so you don't want them to drift from the actual values.

The easiest way to keep your version up to date, in both your documentation and setup.py file, is to have it read from your package's __version__ attribute. I "borrowed" the following conf.py code for sandman from Flask's conf.py :

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 import pkg_resources try: release = pkg_resources.get_distribution ( 'sandman' ) .version except pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: print 'To build the documentation, The distribution information of sandman' print 'Has to be available. Either install the package into your' print 'development environment or run "setup.py develop" to setup the' print 'metadata. A virtualenv is recommended!' sys.exit ( 1 ) del pkg_resources version = '.' .join ( release.split ( '.' )[ :2 ])

This means that, to get the documentation to generate the correct version number, you simply need to have run $ python setup.py develop in your project's virtualenv . Now you only need to worry about keeping __version__ up to date, since setup.py makes use of it as well.

html_theme

Consider changing the html_theme from default . I'm partial to nature , obviously this is a matter of personal preference. The reason I raise this point at all is because the official Python documentation changed themes from default to pydoctheme between Python 2 and Python 3 (the latter theme is a custom theme only available in the cPython source). To some people, seeing the default theme makes a project seem "old".

PyPI

PyPI, the Python Package Index (formerly known as "the Cheeseshop") is a central database of publicly available Python packages. PyPI is where your project's releases "live." Once your package (and its associate meta-data) has been uploaded to PyPI, others can download and install it using pip or easy_install . This point bears repeating: even if your project is available on GitHub, it's not until a release is uploaded to PyPI that your project is useful. Sure, someone could clone your git repo and manually install it directly, but far more people just want to pip install it.

One last step

If you've completed all of the steps in the previous sections, you're likely anxious to bundle up your package, upload it to PyPI, and make it available to the world!

Before you do so, however, there's a helpful tool called cheesecake that is helpful to run as the last step before distributing your package. It analyzes your package and assigns "scores" in a number of categories. It measures how easy/correct packaging and installing your package is, the quality of the code, and the quality and quantity of your documentation.

As a coarse measure of "readiness", cheesecake is great for sanity checking. You'll quickly see if there's an issue with your setup.py file or if you forgot to document a file. I recommend running it before each upload to PyPI, not just the first one.

Initial upload

Now that you've confirmed your code isn't crap and won't break when people try to install it, let's get your package on PyPI! You'll be interacting with PyPI through setuptools and the setup.py script. If this is the first time this particular package is being uploaded to PyPI, you'll first need to register it:

$ python setup.py register

Note: if you don't yet have a free PyPI account, you'll need to make one now to be able to register the package. After you've followed register prompts, you're ready to create your distributable package and upload it to PyPI:

$ python setup.py sdist upload

The command above builds a source distribution ( sdist ) and uploads it to PyPI. If your package isn't pure Python (that is, you have binaries that need to be built), you'll need to do a binary distribution. See the setuptools documentation for more info.

Releases and version numbers

PyPI uses a release version model to decide which version of your package should be available by default. After the initial upload, you'll need to create a release with a new version number each time you want your updated package to be made available on PyPI. Managing your version number can actually be a fairly complex topic, so much so that there's a PEP for it: PEP 440 -- Version Identification and Dependency Specification. I'd definitely suggest following the guidelines in PEP 440 (obviously), but if you choose to use a different versioning scheme, the version used in setup.py must be "higher" than what's currently on PyPI for PyPI to consider the package a new version.

Workflow

After uploading your first release to PyPI, the basic workflow is this:

Do some work on your package (i.e. fix bugs, add features, etc) Make sure the tests pass "Freeze" your code by creating a release branch in git-flow Update the __version__ number in your package's __init__.py file Run python setup.py sdist upload to upload the new version of your package to PyPI

Users depend on you to release frequently enough to get bug fixes out. As long as you're properly managing your version numbers, there is no such thing as releasing "too frequently." Remember: your users aren't manually maintaining the different versions of every Python package they have installed.

Continuous Integration with TravisCI

Continuous Integration refers to the process of continuously integrating all changes for a project (rather than periodic bulk updates). For our purposes, it means that each time we push a commit to GitHub our tests run, telling us if the commit broke something. As you can imagine, this is an incredibly valuable practice. There's no more "forgetting to run the tests" before committing/pushing. If you push a commit that breaks the tests, you'll get an email telling you so.

TravisCI is a service that makes continuous integration for GitHub projects embarrassingly easy. Head over there and create an account if you don't yet have one. Once you're done, we'll need to create one simple file before we're swimming in CI goodness.

Configuration via .travis.yml

Individual projects on TravisCI are configured via a file, .travis.yml , in the project's root directory. Briefly, we need to tell Travis:

What language our project is written in What version of that language it uses What commands are used to install it What commands are used to run the project's tests

Doing so is quite straightforward. Here are the contents of the .travis.yml file from sandman:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 language : python python : - "2.7" install : - "pip install -r requirements.txt --use-mirrors" - "pip install coverage" - "pip install coveralls" script : - "coverage run --source=sandman setup.py test" after_success : coveralls

After listing the language and version, we tell Travis how to install our package. Under install: , make sure you have the line:

1 - "pip install -r requirements.txt --use-mirrors"

This pip install s our projects requirements (and uses PyPI mirrors if necessary). The other two lines in install are specific to sandman. It's using an additional service (coveralls.io) to continuously monitor test case coverage, but that's not necessary for all projects.

script: lists the command needed to run the project's tests. Again, sandman is doing some extra stuff. All your project needs is python setup.py test . And the after_success portion can be dropped all together.

Once you've committed this file and activated your project's repo in TravisCI, push to GitHub. In a few moments, you should see a build kick off on TravisCI based on your most recent commit. If all is successful, you build will be "green" and the status page will show that the build passed. You'll be able to see the history of all of your project's builds at any time. This is especially useful for multi-developer projects, where the history page can be used to see how often a particular developer breaks the build...

You should also receive an email letting you know the build was successful. Though you can probably configure it otherwise, you'll get emails only when the build is broken or fixed, but not if a commit has the same outcome as the build that preceded it. This is incredibly useful, as your not inundated by useless "the build passed!" emails but are still alerted when something changes.

ReadTheDocs for Continuous Documentation Integration

While PyPI has an official documentation site (pythonhosted.org), ReadTheDocs provides a better experience. Why? ReadTheDocs has great integration with GitHub. Once you register on ReadTheDocs, you'll see all of your GitHub repos. Select the appropriate repo, do some minor configuration, and your documentation will be automatically regenerated after each commit to GitHub.

Configuring your project should be a straightforward affair. There are a few things to remember, though. Here's a list of configuration fields and the values you should use which might not be immediately obvious:

Repo: https://github.com/github_username/project_name.git

Default Branch: develop

Default Version: latest

Python configuration file: (leave blank)

Use virtualenv : (checked)

: (checked) Requirements file: requirements.txt

Documentation Type: Sphinx HTML

Don't Repeat Yourself

Now that you've done all that hard work to open-source an existing code base, you likely don't want to have to repeat it all when starting a new project. Luckily, you don't have to. Audrey Roy's Cookiecutter tool (I've linked to the Python version, though there are versions for numerous languages in the main repo).

Cookiecutter is a command line tool that automates the process of starting a project in a way that makes doing the stuff discussed in this article easy. Daniel Greenfeld (@pydanny) wrote a great blog post about it and how it relates to the practices discussed in this article. You should check it out: Cookiecutter: Project Templates Made Easy.

Conclusion

We've now covered all of the commands, tools, and services that go into open sourcing an existing Python package. Sure, you could have just thrown it on GitHub and said, "install it yourself," but no one would have. And you wouldn't really have Open Source Software; you'd simply have "free code."

What's more, you likely never would have attracted outside contributors to your project. By setting up your project in the manner outlined here, you've created an easy to maintain Python package that encourages both use and contribution. And that, after all, is the true spirit of Open Source Software, is it not?