A pythonic, no-nonsense packaging tool for python software. Packaging is as simple as writing a bento.info file with a file which looks as follows:

Name: Foo
Author: John Doe

Library:
    Packages: foo

The package is then installed with bentomaker, the command line interface to bento:

bentomaker configure
bentomaker build
bentomaker install

The goals of bento are simplicity and extensibility. There should be only one way to package simple packages (ideally, relying only on the bento.info file), while being flexible enough to handle complex softwares. The ultimate goal of bento is to replace the hideous distutils extensions to build NumPy and SciPy.

The main features of bento are:

• Indentation-based declarative package description
• Automatic conversion from setup.py to bento format
• Support for arbitrary installation scheme (ala autoconf, with sensible defaults on Windows)
• Simple and flexible data files installation description
• Basic support for console scripts ala setuptools
• Preliminary support for building eggs and windows installers
• Dependency-based extension builders (source content change is automatically rebuilt)
• Parallel build support for C extensions
• Easily bundable, one-file distribution to avoid extra-dependencies
• Hooks to complement or override commands
• Low-level interface to the included build tool to override/change any compilation parameter (compilation flag, compiler, etc...)
• optionally generate a python module with all installation paths to avoid relying on __file__ to retrieve resources.

Planned features:

• Support for msi and Mac OS X .mpkg
• Reliable conversion between packaging formats (egg <-> wininst, mpkg <-> egg, etc...)
• Provide API to enable Linux distributors to write simple extensions for packaging bento-packages as they see fit
• Distutils compatibility mode, driven by the bento.info file
• Protocol to integrate with real build tools like scons, waf or make
• Infrastructure for a correctly designed package index, using well-known practices instead of the broken easy_install + pypi model (easy mirroring, enforced metadata, indexing to enable querying-before-installing, etc...).

Code-wise, bento has the following advantages:

• Clear separation of intent between package description, configuration, build and installation
• No dependency on distutils or setuptools code, with a focus on using standard python idioms

Bento discussion happen on NumPy Mailing list, and development is on github. Bugs should be reported on bento issue-tracker. Online documentation is available on github as well.

BENTO IS IN (VERY) EARLY STAGES: ANY PRODUCTION USAGE IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED AT THIS POINT.

Nevertheless, bento is already capable of building numpy and scipy on some platforms, with less code and more flexibility than the current distutils-based extensions.

Bento may be installed the usual way from setup.py:

python setup.py install --user # python 2.6 and later
python setup.py install --prefix=some_directory

Alternatively, there is a bootstrap script so that bento can install itself:

python bootstrap.py # create the bentomaker[.exe] script/executable 
./bentomaker configure && ./bentomaker build && ./bentomaker install

bentomaker, the bento command line interface has an experimental convert command to convert existing setup.py:

bentomaker convert

If successfull, it will write a file bento.info. If it fails, convert.log should contain useful information. If the conversion fails, please report a bug on the issue-tracker, but keep in mind that complex packages cannot be fully converted, especially if they rely on complex distutils extensions.

A simple python distribution named hello, with one package hello:

hello/__init__.py
hello/...

may be described as follows:

Name: hello
Version: 1.0

Library:
    Packages:
        hello

Bento currently only has a command-line interface, bentomaker. It can be used to configure, build, install, etc... the distribution:

bentomaker configure --prefix=/usr/local
bentomaker build
bentomaker install
bentomaker sdist
bentomaker build_egg
bentomaker build_wininst # on windows only

Regenerating the one-file distribution file ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you modify any source file, you need to regenerate the one-file distribution:

python tools/singledist.py

If you don't want to include windows executables (e.g. you don't support windows):

python tools/singledist --noinclude-exe

Being able to describe most python packages from a purely static file has the following advantages:

• Inspection of packages becomes easier for third parties, like OS vendors.
• No arbitrary code execution for simple packages, you only have to trust bento code instead of setup.py (which can do anything that python can)
• Although the current bento implementation uses distutils to actually build the extensions, distutils becomes an implementation detail of the system, in the sense that another build system can be build on top of bento. This gives a simple but powerful way forward for improving the situation of python packaging.

Useful discussions which are related to bento design:

• BUILDS (never passed the design stage AFAIK): http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-October/010343.html
• Going away from setup.py: http://www.mail-archive.com/distutils-sig@python.org/msg08031.html
• 'Just use debian' on distutils-sig: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-September/010129.html

Bento design borrows from:

• Cabal
• Automake (for data files description) and autoconf
• RPM spec file

The bento package indexing is inspired by the Hackage database, CRAN and linux packaging tools.