Re: Bug#758402: ITP: python-xstatic-jquery.quicksearch -- jQuery.quicksearch XStatic support
On 08/17/2014 10:29 PM, Justin B Rye wrote:
> Thomas Goirand wrote:
>> Thanks for this message. I would welcome indeed any change to this long
>> description, reviewed by the d-l-english team!
>
> Well, I'd like to, but so far I don't really understand it. I don't
> even know what it means by "static files". As opposed to what?
As opposed to dynamic content. For example:
- javascript
- .css
- .png
are all static files, and not scripts. This is what XStatic provides.
>> I do believe this is relevant. The point of the XStatic packages is that
>> they are available using "pip install", which make them universal. This
>> is a very good "selling point" for Python developers, and will push them
>> to use XStatic rather than embedding static files directly in their
>> python module/app.
>
> I'm sure it's an interesting fact about XStatic, and therefore may
> belong in the package description for python-xstatic. But how is it
> useful information for people trying to decide whether to install
> python-xstatic-jquery.quicksearch? It seems to amount to "this
> software is also available as something that isn't a Debian package",
> and that's true of pretty much anything in the archives.
The point is that they will have an API to find out what is the location
of the jquery.quicksearch in the system. And this API will work on every
operating system using packages (if they are available), or by
downloading the XStatic package using "pip install
xstatic-jquery.quicksearch" within the Python virtualenv.
> Meanwhile there's literally no description whatsoever of the
> functionality of jQuery.quicksearch!
The package depends on libjs-quicksearch. This is where you have the
correct description, and that's where I expect users will read. Do you
think the description of jquery.quicksearch should be copied there too?
By the way, python-xstatic-* packages aren't directly useful for the
final users, they will only be dependencies of Python applications, and
in my case, the OpenStack dashboard (eg: the Horizon web GUI).
On 08/18/2014 06:26 AM, Justin B Rye wrote:
> Some further googling reveals that by "static files", Python web
> developers mean the kind of data files you might expect to find under
> $DOCROOT/resources/ or somewhere.
>From Debian's perspective, the files would be in /usr/share/<somewhere>.
> "Static" files as opposed to... I'm not sure what. Dynamically
> generated pages?
Yes. Often Django based web interface (as we're in Python). FYI Django
is *the* Python web GUI framework everyone is using, though I don't
think XStatic is specific to Django itself.
> But I definitely don't yet understand how XStatic renders a collection
> of files "easily usable on all operating systems with any package
> management system". Sure, bundling files into a Python egg might make
> them accessible via a Python egg installer, but that's not the same
> thing as making it possible to install them with APT.
The point of XStatic is to avoid developers to embed static files of
libraries (often: javascript libraries) directly in their Python
application, which is a security disaster from a distribution stand
point. A Python developer will simply make his application "require"
(which is the Python language to say "depends") the XStatic python
module. If the developer works with pip, then it will automatically "pip
install xstatic-jquery.quicksearch" for example, which will go in the
virtualenv (which is a kind of chroot-like stuff specific to Python, if
you like).
When in a distribution like Debian, the
python-xstatic-jquery.quicksearch does *not* embed the library. It only
Depends: on the libjs-jquery.quicksearch (which I packaged separately),
and "points" to it (eg: in the package, I have patched upstream code
"BASE_DIR" configuration variable, which is what upstream recommends).
So XStatic stuff are really made for better integration within
distributions.
> So the thing to do is arrange for the package that contains your
> Python software to depend on the package that contains that JavaScript
> library. Right? Oh, no, of course, you can't do that because you're
> not on Debian, so your packaged Python doesn't have any way of
> depending on JavaScript - other than directly including the files,
> which is nasty. Or... putting them in a *fake* Python package? Aaah!
> Maybe this is beginning to make sense now...
I think you got it! Except that it's not really a "fake" python package,
it's a real one which is available from PyPi... :)
So, these Python packages really include the javascript, though the
Debian resulting python .deb will not.
>> By having static files in packages, it is also easier to build
>> virtual envs,
>
> Borderline ungrammatical. And isn't it "virtualenvs"? (Or "virtual
> environments", but that's bad because it sounds as if it means what it
> says.)
virtual envs, or virtualenvs, are in the common Python dictionary. This
should stay as-is. Anyone who knows a bit about Python knows (or heard
about) virtualenvs.
>> support linux/bsd/... distribution package maintainers and even
>> windows installs using the same mechanism.
>
> All the above is the blurb for the XStatic framework, and doesn't
> belong in the python-xstatic-jquery.quicksearch package description
> unless that Debian package really does make it easier to support
> Windows installs. A deverbosified version could go in the package
> description for python-xstatic, but I'd prefer to start from somewhere
> else.
Yeah, that's bad! Feel free to provide something better.
> XStatic (see python-xstatic) is a Python web development tool for
> bundling sets of required data files from external non-Python
> projects into Python packages that your app can depend on portably.
Very good, thanks! Should that be it for all the python-xstatic-* packages?
> Then the ...-jquery.quicksearch package should end with a description
> of this JS library, or at least a pointer to libjs-jquery.quicksearch.
Which of the 2 options would you recommend?
> So the point of this package isn't that you'd want to *install* it -
> after all, you could just do "apt install libjs-jquery.quicksearch".
> The point is to make it possible for your Python modules to depend on
> this Python module, because that approach lets you install your webapp
> on BeOS like all the cool kids are doing and have it pull in all the
> appropriate data files. Except... why has it been Debianised? Nope,
> this still isn't quite making sense to me.
The debianization part is the "Depends: libjs-jquery.quicksearch", and
the fact that xstatic/pkg/jquery_quicksearch/__init__.py has been
patched to point to /usr/share/javascript/jquery.quicksearch. It also
reports the version of libjs-jquery.quicksearch.
I hope now that everything make sense, and that you can write back a
single new reply so that we can close this case! :)
Thanks a lot for your work Justin,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
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