zest.releaser is collection of command-line programs to help you
automate the task of releasing a software project. It's particularly
helpful with Python package projects, but it can also be used for
non-Python projects. For example, it's used to tag buildouts - a project
only needs a version.txt file to be used with zest.releaser.
It will help you to automate:
- Updating the version number. The version number can either be in setup.py or version.txt. For example, 0.3.dev0 (current) to 0.3 (release) to 0.4.dev0 (new development version).
- Updating the history/changes file. It logs the release date on release and adds a new section for the upcoming changes (new development version).
- Tagging the release. It creates a tag in your version control system named after the released version number.
- Uploading a source release to PyPI. It will only do this if the package is already registered there (else it will ask, defaulting to 'no'); the Zest Releaser is careful not to publish your private projects! It can also check out the tag in a temporary directory in case you need to modify it.
Contents
Getting a good installation consists of two steps: getting the zest.releaser commands, and setting up your environment so you can upload releases to pypi (if you want that).
Just a simple pip zest.releaser or easy_install zest.releaser
is enough.
Alternatively, buildout users can install zest.releaser as part of a specific project's buildout, by having a buildout configuration such as:
[buildout] parts = releaser [releaser] recipe = zc.recipe.egg eggs = zest.releaser
Of course you must have a version control system installed. zest.releaser currently supports:
- Subversion (svn)
- Mercurial (hg)
- Git (git)
- Bazaar (bzr)
Others could be added if there are volunteers.
When the (full)release command tries to upload your package to a pypi
server, zest.releaser basically just executes the command python
setup.py register sdist --formats=zip upload. The python here is the same
python that was used to install zest.releaser. If that command would
fail when you try it manually (for example because you have not
configured a .pypirc file yet), then zest.releaser does not magically
make it work. This means that you may need to have some extra python
packages installed:
- setuptools or distribute (when using subversion 1.5 or higher you need setuptools 0.6c11 or higher or any distribute version)
- setuptools-git (Setuptools plugin for finding files under Git version control)
- setuptools_hg (Setuptools plugin for finding files under Mercurial version control)
- setuptools_bzr (Setuptools plugin for finding files under Bazaar version control)
- collective.dist (when using python2.4, depending on your
~/.pypircfile) - setuptools_subversion (Setuptools plugin for finding files under Subversion version control.) You probably need this when you upgrade to the recent subversion 1.7. If you suddenly start missing files in the sdists you upload to PyPI you definitely need it. Alternatively: set up a proper MANIFEST.in as that method works with any version control system.
The setuptools plugins are mostly so you do not miss files in the generated sdist that is uploaded to pypi.
For more info, see the section on Uploading to pypi server(s).
In general, if you are missing files in the uploaded package, the best
is to put a proper MANIFEST.in file next to your setup.py.
See zest.pocompile for an example.
Zest.releaser gives you four commands to help in releasing python packages. They must be run in a version controlled checkout. The commands are:
- prerelease: asks you for a version number (defaults to the current version minus a 'dev' or so), updates the setup.py or version.txt and the CHANGES/HISTORY/CHANGELOG file (with either .rst/.txt/.markdown or no extension) with this new version number and offers to commit those changes to subversion (or bzr or hg or git)
- release: copies the the trunk or branch of the current checkout and
creates a version control tag of it. Makes a checkout of the tag in a
temporary directory. Offers to register and upload a source dist
of this package to PyPI (Python Package Index). Note: if the package has
not been registered yet, it will not do that for you. You must register the
package manually (
python setup.py register) so this remains a conscious decision. The main reason is that you want to avoid having to say: "Oops, I uploaded our client code to the internet; and this is the initial version with the plaintext root passwords." - postrelease: asks you for a version number (gives a sane default), adds a development marker to it, updates the setup.py or version.txt and the CHANGES/HISTORY/CHANGELOG file with this and offers to commit those changes to version control. Note that with git and hg, you'd also be asked to push your changes (since 3.27). Otherwise the release and tag only live in your local hg/git repository and not on the server.
- fullrelease: all of the above in order.
There are two additional tools:
- longtest: small tool that renders a setup.py's long description
and opens it in a web browser. This assumes an installed docutils
(as it needs
rst2html.py). - lasttagdiff: small tool that shows the diff of the currently committed trunk with the last released tag. Handy for checking whether all the changes are adequately described in the changes file.
Zest.releaser originated at Zest software so there are some assumptions build-in that might or might not fit you. Lots of people are using it in various companies and open source projects, so it'll probably fit :-)
If you are using svn, your svn is structured with /trunk, /tags (or /tag) and optionally /branches (or /branch). Both a /trunk or a /branches/something checkout is ok.
There's a version.txt or setup.py in your project. The version.txt has a single line with the version number (newline optional). The setup.py should have a single
version = '0.3'line somewhere. You can also have it in the actualsetup()call, on its own line still, as `` version = '0.3',``. Indentation and the comma are preserved. If you need something special, you can always do aversion=versionand put the actual version statement in a zest.releaser-friendly format near the top of the file. Reading (in Plone products) a version.txt into setup.py works great, too.The history/changes file restriction is probably the most severe at the moment. zest.releaser searches for a restructuredtext header with parenthesis. So something like:
Changelog for xyz ================= 0.3 (unreleased) ---------------- - Did something 0.2 (1972-12-25) ---------------- - Reinout was born.
That's just the style we started with. Pretty clear and useful. It also supports the current zopeskel style with
0.3 - unreleased.If using Python 2.4 you don't want to have tar.gz eggs due to an obscure bug on python
The source code can be found on github: https://github.com/zestsoftware/zest.releaser
If you are going to do a fix or want to run the tests, please see the
DEVELOPERS.txt file in the root of the package.
Bugs can be added to https://github.com/zestsoftware/zest.releaser/issues
Note that there are alternative release scripts available, for instance http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.releaser which installs itself as a setuptools command ("python setup.py release"), so it "only" works with setuptools projects.
Like noted earlier, for safety reasons zest.releaser will only offer to upload your package to http://pypi.python.org when the package is already registered there. If this is not the case yet, you can go to the directory where zest.releaser put the checkout (or make a fresh checkout yourself. Then with the python version of your choice do:
python setup.py register sdist --formats=zip upload
For this to work you will need a .pypirc file in your home
directory that has your pypi login credentials like this:
[server-login] username:maurits password:secret
Since python 2.6, or in earlier python versions with collective.dist,
you can specify multiple indexes for uploading your package in
.pypirc:
[distutils] index-servers = pypi local [pypi] #pypi.python.org username:maurits password:secret [local] repository:http://localhost:8080/test/products/ username:maurits password:secret # You may need to specify the realm, which is the domain the # server sends back when you do a challenge: #realm:Zope
See http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.dist for more info.
When all this is configured correctly, zest.releaser will first
reregister and upload at the official pypi (if the package is
registered there already). Then it will offer to upload to the other
index servers that you have specified in .pypirc.
Note that since version 3.15, zest.releaser also looks for this information in the setup.cfg if your package has that file. One way to use this, is to restrict the servers that zest.releaser will ask you upload to. If you have defined 40 index-servers in your pypirc but you have the following in your setup.cfg, you will not be asked to upload to any server:
[distutils] index-servers =
Note that after creating the tag we still ask you if you want to checkout that tag for tweaks or pypi/distutils server upload. We could add some extra checks to see if that is really needed, but someone who does not have index-servers listed, may still want to use an entry point like gocept.zestreleaser.customupload to do uploading, or do some manual steps first before uploading.
Some people will hardly ever want to do a release on PyPI but in 99
out of 100 cases only want to create a tag. They won't like the
default answer of 'yes' to that question of whether to create a
checkout of the tag. So since version 3.16 you can influence this
default answer. You can add some lines to the .pypirc file in
your home directory to change the default answer for all packages, or
change it for individual packages in their setup.cfg file. The
lines are this:
[zest.releaser] release = no
You can use no/false/off/0 or yes/true/on/1 as answers; upper, lower or mixed case are all fine.