Best practices to be followed while building an open source Python application.

1. Building an open source
Python application
the right way

2. Hi.

3. I’m Kiran.
Hacker
Programmer
Open Source enthusiast
Computer Science fanboy

4. Currently, having an affair with
Python

5. Why follow
Guidelines
Conventions
Best Practices

6. Your code is
Open Source !

7. What does that mean
You ask ?

8. Code available to
People will
everyone
start using it
People will(might)
try to help

9. So, what do I do ?

10. Make it easier for
people to use
your application

11. How ?

12. Let’s start with
basic project structure

14. Let’s make it simpler

15. Application
Tests
Documentation
Dependency Management
Setup
Publish
Task Execution
Extras

16. Application

17. Write good
code.
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

18. Don’t bloat your code with
classes
Use them when required

19. Use
modules
to architect your application

20. Tests

21. “Code not tested is broken by
design”
- Jacob Kaplan Moss

22. Lots of ways to
Test
your application

23. unit tests
Start with simple

24. py.test
unittest
Nose
Most
commonly
used

25. Documentation

26. For small projects
Code is the documentation
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/

27. Sadly
This is not
scalable

28. Use
Sphinx
http://sphinx-doc.org/

29. HTML
EPUB
Automatic
Syntax
Highlighting
PDF
Plain Text
Theming
Support
Man
Pages
LaTex
Internationalisation

31. Dependency
Management

32. Project Dependencies
requirements.txt

33. then
pip install -r requirements.txt

35. Setup

36. Pro Tip:
Use
Virtualenv
to setup your environment

37. Why ?
Test with different Python versions
Install dependencies inside environment
No unnecessary namespace pollution
Different environments and settings
per project

38. Publish

39. Every project’s
setup.py
contains the necessary information
required for it’s installation

40. Packages and uploads your application to
Python Package Index
a.k.a
PyPI

41. setup(
name='project name',
version=myapp.__version__,
description='project description here',
license=open("LICENSE").read(),
author='author',
author_email='email',
url='project url',
packages=['myapp'],
include_package_data=True,
classifiers=(
'Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable',
'Intended Audience :: Developers',
'Natural Language :: English',
'License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License',
'Programming Language :: Python',
'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.6',
'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7',
'Programming Language :: Python :: 3.3',
),
test_suite='tests',
)

42. Register at PyPI
python setup.py register
Package and Upload application
python setup.py sdist upload

43. Install application on any platform
pip install myapp

45. Task Execution

46. Use a
Makefile
to automate multiple tasks
and commands
http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/

47. Extras
(a.k.a enhancements)

48. AUTHORS
CHANGELOG
CONTRIBUTING

49. License
is
very important
for open source projects
http://www.tldrlegal.com/

50. Recap

51. R
C
E
P
A
Application
Tests
Documentation
Dependency Management
Setup
Publish
Task Execution
Extras

52. Questions ?

53. Thank you !
@kirang89
http://kirang.in