ResourcePackage 1.0.0 for Python

ResourcePackage is a mechanism for automatically managing "resources" (i.e. non-Python files: small images, documentation files, binary data) embedded in Python modules (as Python source code), particularly for those wishing to create re-usable Python packages which require their own resource-sets. You can download it from the project page on SourceForge.

ResourcePackage allows you to set up resource-specific sub-packages within your package. It creates a Python module for each resource placed in the resource package's directory during development. You can set up these packages simply by copying an __init__.py file and then use the resources saved/updated in the package directory like so:

from mypackage.resources import open_ico
result = myStringLoadingFunction( open_ico.data )

ResourcePackage scans the package-directory on import to refresh module contents, so simply saving an updated version of the file will make it available the next time your application is run.

When you are ready to distribute your package, you need only replace the copied __init__.py file with a dummy __init__.py to disable the scanning support and eliminate all dependencies on resourcepackage (that is, your users do not need to have resourcepackage installed once this is done).

Users of your packages do not need to do anything special when creating their applications to give you access to your resources, as they are simply Python packages/modules included in your package's hierarchy. Your package's code (other than the mentioned __init__.py) doesn't change. Similarly, automatic packaging systems will pick up your resources as regular Python modules being imported by your source-code.

There are two utility scripts, extract.py and scan.py which can be used to manually extract or embed resources in a resourcepackage package even if the package no longer has a resourcepackage-aware __init__.py file. See these scripts for usage details.

ResourcePackage has been stable for many months now. There is, at the moment, nothing more planned to be added or changed, as it fulfills all of my needs for it. I am, of course, interested in suggestions you might have for improving the package. You can get the distribution from the project page at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/resourcepackage/

Happy Packaging!

Usage Details

During development:

copy scanning__init__.py to __init__.py in your resource directory
[optionally] edit __init__.py to customise operation (examples):

use resourcepackage.wxgenerators (or another generator package) to provide special handling for particular file-types
set the "force" flag to always reload resources into their corresponding modules

save your resources to the resource directory

on (re-)import of __init__.py, it will scan your resource directory and update resource files with dates newer than their corresponding python module

import your resources as Python modules and access their binary content as package.module.data

name will be the name of the file (with extension) with spaces, '.' and '-' characters converted to '_' characters.

Note: in version 1.0.0a2 and earlier, module names dropped the file extension and lowercased the entire module name. In 1.0.0a3 and forward neither of these transformations is performed. As a result, "Index.html" will be show up in the module Index_html, instead of index in all newer version. Also as a result, Index.html and index.html will be recognised as the same name on case-ignoring filesystems, but if you've already got the source files on a case-ignoring system, they can't both exist :) .

When wanting to distribute your package:

Replace __init__.py with your run-time __init__.py (which can just be an empty Python module, as with any Python package, which doesn't need to know anything about ResourcePackage).

That eliminates all connections to ResourcePackage and you now have a regular Python package with all of your resources embedded in it's modules. This isn't technically necessary, but it will make the installation cleaner and more efficient for users of your package.

Reference Documentation

Pydoc documentation is available online for those wishing to browse it.

Changes

There have been a few changes in ResourcePackage during the development period. In particular:

version 1.0.0 adds a few Unix #! lines to the extract and scan scripts.
version 1.0.0b1 introduces an encoding comment at the top of generated files. This avoids a spurious warning from Python 2.3b2 and above indicating that non-ASCII characters are being included in a string.
version 1.0.0a3 had some significant incompatible changes from version 1.0.0a2. If you downloaded ResourcePackage before 1.0.0a3, you should expect some significant breakage, as the naming scheme for modules, as well as the mechanisms for use in scanning__init__.py changed significantly. See readme.txt in the source archive for details.