Running a script to build docs from setup.py

[Tony Houghton]

I want to write a setup.py script, using distutils, for a python library
called ROX-Lib2 (package name "rox"). The library includes a script to
build HTML documentation from the pydoc strings. I'd like to run that
script from setup.py but I don't know the best way to do that. I've
looked through the manual but I can't find any hooks in distutils for
generating files at install time other than extension modules and .pyc
files. Should I just run the script from somewhere in my setup.py before
calling distutils' setup function?

 

[Tony Houghton]

Indirectly related: Ian Bicking's article on using Python's ‘setup.py’
as a ‘Makefile’ replacement:

<URL:http://blog.ianbicking.org/pythons-makefile.html>

Thanks, but I don't think that adds much to the distutils manual.

If one is writing a ‘setup.py’ anyway, I think it makes sense to use
that as the build program for the whole project if possible. Good
hunting!

Yes. Really I only want to write a setup.py because it makes it easier
to make a debian package, but the more of the installation that's done
by setup.py the better I suppose, then other people might find it
useful.