Software releasing made easy and repeatable
Project description
Package releasing made easy: zest.releaser overview and installation
zest.releaser is collection of command-line programs to help you automate the task of releasing a Python project.
It does away with all the boring bits. This is what zest.releaser automates for you:
It updates the version number. The version number can either be in setup.py or version.txt. For example, it switches you from 0.3.dev0 (current development version) to 0.3 (release) to 0.4.dev0 (new development version).
It updates the history/changes file. It logs the release date on release and adds a new heading for the upcoming changes (new development version).
It tags the release. It creates a tag in your version control system named after the released version number.
It optionally uploads a source release to PyPI. It will only do this if the package is already registered there (else it will ask, defaulting to ‘no’); zest releaser is careful not to publish your private projects!
Most important URLs
First the three most important links:
The full documentation is at zestreleaser.readthedocs.org.
We’re on PyPI, so we’re only an pip install zest.releaser away from installation on your computer.
The code is at github.com/zestsoftware/zest.releaser.
And… we’re automatically being tested by Travis:
Installation
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 =
scripts
[scripts]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs = zest.releaser
Version control systems: svn, hg, git, bzr
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! Git and mercurial support have been contributed years ago when we were working with bzr and subversion, for instance.
Available commands
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.
Credits
Reinout van Rees (Nelen & Schuurmans) is the originator and main author.
Maurits van Rees (Zest Software) added a heapload of improvements.
Kevin Teague (Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Center) added support for multiple version control systems, most notable Mercurial.
Wouter vanden Hove (University of Gent) added support for uploading to multiple servers, using collective.dist.
Godefroid Chapelle (BubbleNet) added /tag besides /tags for subversion.
Changelog for zest.releaser
3.41 (2012-11-02)
Getting the version from setup.py can give a traceback if the setup.py has an error. During prerelease this would result in a proposed version of ‘Traceback’. Now we print the traceback and quit. [maurits]
3.40 (2012-10-13)
Support svn (1.7+) checkouts that are not directly in the root. Only applies when someone checks out a whole tree and wants to release one of the items in a subdirectory. Fixes #27.
3.39 (2012-09-26)
Only search for files in version control. This is when finding a history file or version.txt file. We should not edit files that are not in our package. Fixes issue #22. [maurits]
3.38 (2012-09-25)
Fixed svn tag extraction on windows: a \r could end up at the end of every tag name. Thanks Wouter Vanden Hove for reporting it!
Small fixes to the developers documentation and to the automatic travis CI tests configuration.
3.37 (2012-07-14)
Documentation update! Started sphinx documentation at zestreleaser.readthedocs.org. Removed documentation from the README and put it into sphinx.
Actually ask if the user wants to continue with the release when there is no MANIFEST.in. We asked for a yes/no answer, but the question was missing. [maurits]
3.36 (2012-06-26)
Improved changes/history file detection and fixed the documentation at this point. We now recognize CHANGES, HISTORY and CHANGELOG with .rst, .txt, .markdown and with no extension.
Set up travis CI integration. Our tests pass on python 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7.
3.35 (2012-06-21)
When checking for recommended files, ask if the user wants to continue when we suspect the created PyPI release may be broken. See issue #10. [maurits]
Preserve existing EOL in setup.py and history file (See http://docs.python.org/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-files) [tom_gross]
3.34 (2012-03-20)
In the warning about a missing MANIFEST.in file, also suggest to install setuptools_subversion/git, etc. Fixes issue #4. [maurits]
3.33 (2012-03-20)
Fix python 2.4 issues with tarfile by always creating a zip file. Formerly we would only do this when using python2.4 for doing the release, but a tarball sdist created by python2.6 could still break when the end user is using python 2.4. [kiorky]
3.32 (2012-03-09)
In prerelease recommend the user to add a MANIFEST.in file. See http://docs.python.org/distutils/sourcedist.html for more info. [maurits]
3.31 (2012-02-23)
Fixed test for unadvised egg_info commands on tag, which could result in a ConfigParser error. [maurits]
3.30 (2011-12-27)
Added some more PyPI classifiers. Tested with Python 2.4, 2,4, 2.6, and 2.7. [maurits]
Moved changes of 3.15 and older to docs/HISTORY.txt. [maurits]
Added GPL license text in the package. [maurits]
Updated README.txt. Added MANIFEST.in. [maurits]
3.29 (2011-12-27)
In postrelease create a version number like 1.0.dev0. See http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0386 [maurits]
Offer to cleanup setup.cfg on the tag when releasing. You do not want tag_build or tag_svn_revision options in a release usually. [maurits]
For convenience also print the tag checkout location when only doing a release (instead of a fullrelease). [maurits]
3.28 (2011-11-18)
Git: in pre/postrelease only check for uncommitted changes in files that are already tracked. [maurits]
3.27 (2011-11-12)
Postrelease now offers (=asks) to push your changes to the server if you’re using hg or git.
Support for some legacy projects, often converted from CVS, have multiple subprojects under a single trunk. The trunk part from the top level project isn’t erroneously stripped out anymore. Thanks to Marc Sibson for the fix.
3.26 (2011-11-01)
Added sanity check before doing a prerelease so you are warned when you are about to commit on a tag instead of a branch (or trunk or master). [maurits]
3.25 (2011-10-28)
Removed special handling of subversion lower than 1.7 when searching for the history/changes file. In corner cases it may be that we find a wrong HISTORY.txt or CHANGES.txt file when you have it buried deep in your directory structure. Please move it to the root then, which is the proper place for it. [maurits]
Fixed finding a history/changes file that is in a sub directory when using subversion 1.7 or higher or bazaar. [maurits]
3.24 (2011-10-19)
Note: you may need to install setuptools_subversion when you use 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. [maurits]
Made compatible with subversion 1.7 (the only relevant change is in the code that checks if a tags or tag directory already exists). Earlier versions of subversion are of course still supported. [maurits]
Code repository moved to github: https://github.com/zestsoftware/zest.releaser [maurits]
3.23 (2011-09-28)
Fixed opening the html long description in longtest on Mac OS X Lion or python2.7 by using a file:// url. Fixes https://bugs.launchpad.net/zest.releaser/+bug/858011 [maurits]
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