Usage

pbr is a setuptools plugin and so to use it you must use setuptools and call setuptools.setup(). While the normal setuptools facilities are available, pbr makes it possible to express them through static data files.

setup.py

pbr only requires a minimal setup.py file compared to a standard setuptools project. This is because most configuration is located in static configuration files. This recommended minimal setup.py file should look something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    setup_requires=['pbr'],
    pbr=True,
)

Note

It is necessary to specify pbr=True to enabled pbr functionality.

Note

While one can pass any arguments supported by setuptools to setup(), any conflicting arguments supplied in setup.cfg will take precedence.

pyproject.toml

PBR can be configured as a PEP517 build-system in pyproject.toml. This currently continues to rely on setuptools which means you need the above setup.py file to be present. The main benefits to using a pyproject.toml file with PBR are that you can control the versions of PBR and setuptools that are used avoiding easy_install invocation. Your build-system block in pyproject.toml will need to look something like this:

[build-system]
requires = ["pbr>=6.0.0", "setuptools>=64.0.0"]
build-backend = "pbr.build"

Eventually PBR may grow its own direct support for PEP517 build hooks, but until then it will continue to need setuptools and setup.py.

setup.cfg

The setup.cfg file is an INI-like file that can mostly replace the setup.py file. It is similar to the setup.cfg file found in recent versions of setuptools. A simple sample can be found in pbr’s own setup.cfg (it uses its own machinery to install itself):

[metadata]
name = pbr
author = OpenStack Foundation
author_email = openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org
summary = OpenStack's setup automation in a reusable form
description_file = README.rst
description_content_type = text/x-rst; charset=UTF-8
home_page = https://launchpad.net/pbr
project_urls =
    Bug Tracker = https://bugs.launchpad.net/pbr/
    Documentation = https://docs.openstack.org/pbr/
    Source Code = https://opendev.org/openstack/pbr
license = Apache-2
classifier =
    Development Status :: 4 - Beta
    Environment :: Console
    Environment :: OpenStack
    Intended Audience :: Developers
    Intended Audience :: Information Technology
    License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License
    Operating System :: OS Independent
    Programming Language :: Python
keywords =
    setup
    distutils

[files]
packages =
    pbr
data_files =
    etc/pbr = etc/*
    etc/init =
        pbr.packaging.conf
        pbr.version.conf

[entry_points]
console_scripts =
    pbr = pbr.cmd:main
pbr.config.drivers =
    plain = pbr.cfg.driver:Plain

Recent versions of setuptools provide many of the same sections as pbr. However, pbr does provide a number of additional sections:

  • files

  • entry_points

  • backwards_compat

  • pbr

In addition, there are some modifications to other sections:

  • metadata

For all other sections, you should refer to either the setuptools documentation or the documentation of the package that provides the section, such as the extract_messages section provided by Babel.

Note

Comments may be used in setup.cfg, however all comments should start with a # and may be on a single line, or in line, with at least one white space character immediately preceding the #. Semicolons are not a supported comment delimiter. For instance:

[section]
# A comment at the start of a dedicated line
key =
    value1 # An in line comment
    value2
    # A comment on a dedicated line
    value3

Note

On Python 3 setup.cfg is explicitly read as UTF-8. On Python 2 the encoding is dependent on the terminal encoding.

files

The files section defines the install location of files in the package using three fundamental keys: packages, namespace_packages, and data_files.

packages

A list of top-level packages that should be installed. The behavior of packages is similar to setuptools.find_packages in that it recurses the Python package hierarchy below the given top level and installs all of it. If packages is not specified, it defaults to the value of the name field given in the [metadata] section.

namespace_packages

Similar to packages, but is a list of packages that provide namespace packages.

data_files

A list of files to be installed. The format is an indented block that contains key value pairs which specify target directory and source file to install there. More than one source file for a directory may be indicated with a further indented list. Source files are stripped of leading directories. Additionally, pbr supports a simple file globbing syntax for installing entire directory structures. For example:

[files]
data_files =
    etc/pbr = etc/pbr/*
    etc/neutron =
        etc/api-paste.ini
        etc/dhcp-agent.ini
    etc/init.d = neutron.init

This will result in /etc/neutron containing api-paste.ini and dhcp-agent.ini, both of which pbr will expect to find in the etc directory in the root of the source tree. Additionally, neutron.init from that directory will be installed in /etc/init.d. All of the files and directories located under etc/pbr in the source tree will be installed into /etc/pbr.

Note that this behavior is relative to the effective root of the environment into which the packages are installed, so depending on available permissions this could be the actual system-wide /etc directory or just a top-level etc subdirectory of a virtualenv.

entry_points

The entry_points section defines entry points for generated console scripts and Python libraries. This is actually provided by setuptools but is documented here owing to its importance.

The general syntax of specifying entry points is a top level name indicating the entry point group name, followed by one or more key value pairs naming the entry point to be installed. For instance:

[entry_points]
console_scripts =
    pbr = pbr.cmd:main
pbr.config.drivers =
    plain = pbr.cfg.driver:Plain
    fancy = pbr.cfg.driver:Fancy

Will cause a console script called pbr to be installed that executes the main function found in pbr.cmd. Additionally, two entry points will be installed for pbr.config.drivers, one called plain which maps to the Plain class in pbr.cfg.driver and one called fancy which maps to the Fancy class in pbr.cfg.driver.

backwards_compat

pbr

The pbr section controls pbr-specific options and behaviours.

skip_git_sdist

If enabled, pbr will not generate a manifest file from git commits. If this is enabled, you may need to define your own manifest template.

This can also be configured using the SKIP_GIT_SDIST environment variable, as described here.

skip_changelog

If enabled, pbr will not generated a ChangeLog file from git commits.

This can also be configured using the SKIP_WRITE_GIT_CHANGELOG environment variable, as described here

skip_authors

If enabled, pbr will not generate an AUTHORS file from git commits.

This can also be configured using the SKIP_GENERATE_AUTHORS environment variable, as described here

skip_reno

If enabled, pbr will not generate a RELEASENOTES.txt file if reno is present and configured.

This can also be configured using the SKIP_GENERATE_RENO environment variable, as described here.

autodoc_tree_index_modules

A boolean option controlling whether pbr should generate an index of modules using sphinx-apidoc. By default, all files except setup.py are included, but this can be overridden using the autodoc_tree_excludes option.

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been replaced by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc extension. Refer to the build_sphinx overview for more information.

autodoc_tree_excludes

A list of modules to exclude when building documentation using sphinx-apidoc. Defaults to [setup.py]. Refer to the sphinx-apidoc man page for more information.

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been replaced by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc extension. Refer to the build_sphinx overview for more information.

autodoc_index_modules

A boolean option controlling whether pbr should itself generates documentation for Python modules of the project. By default, all found Python modules are included; some of them can be excluded by listing them in autodoc_exclude_modules.

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been replaced by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc extension. Refer to the build_sphinx overview for more information.

autodoc_exclude_modules

A list of modules to exclude when building module documentation using pbr. fnmatch style pattern (e.g. myapp.tests.*) can be used.

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been replaced by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc extension. Refer to the build_sphinx overview for more information.

api_doc_dir

A subdirectory inside the build_sphinx.source_dir where auto-generated API documentation should be written, if autodoc_index_modules is set to True. Defaults to "api".

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been replaced by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc extension. Refer to the build_sphinx overview for more information.

Note

When using autodoc_tree_excludes or autodoc_index_modules you may also need to set exclude_patterns in your Sphinx configuration file (generally found at doc/source/conf.py in most OpenStack projects) otherwise Sphinx may complain about documents that are not in a toctree. This is especially true if the [sphinx_build] warning-is-error option is set. See the Sphinx build configuration file documentation for more information on configuring Sphinx.

Changed in version 4.2: The autodoc_tree_index_modules, autodoc_tree_excludes, autodoc_index_modules, autodoc_exclude_modules and api_doc_dir settings are all deprecated.

Changed in version 2.0: The pbr section used to take a warnerrors option that would enable the -W (Turn warnings into errors.) option when building Sphinx. This feature was broken in 1.10 and was removed in pbr 2.0 in favour of the [build_sphinx] warning-is-error provided in Sphinx 1.5+.

metadata

build_sphinx

Changed in version 3.0: The build_sphinx plugin used to default to building both HTML and man page output. This is no longer the case, and you should explicitly set builders to html man if you wish to retain this behavior.

Deprecated since version 4.2: This feature has been superseded by the sphinxcontrib-apidoc (for generation of API documentation) and Sphinx Extension (for configuration of versioning via package metadata) extensions. It has been removed in version 6.0.

Requirements

Requirements files are used in place of the install_requires and extras_require attributes. Requirement files should be given one of the below names. This order is also the order that the requirements are tried in:

  • requirements.txt

  • tools/pip-requires

Only the first file found is used to install the list of packages it contains.

Changed in version 5.0: Previously you could specify requirements for a given major version of Python using requirements files with a -pyN suffix. This was deprecated in 4.0 and removed in 5.0 in favour of environment markers.

Extra requirements

Groups of optional dependencies, or “extra” requirements, can be described in your setup.cfg, rather than needing to be added to setup.py. An example (which also demonstrates the use of environment markers) is shown below.

Environment markers

Environment markers are conditional dependencies which can be added to the requirements (or to a group of extra requirements) automatically, depending on the environment the installer is running in. They can be added to requirements in the requirements file, or to extras defined in setup.cfg, but the format is slightly different for each.

For requirements.txt:

argparse; python_version=='2.6'

This will result in the package depending on argparse only if it’s being installed into Python 2.6.

For extras specified in setup.cfg, add an extras section. For instance, to create two groups of extra requirements with additional constraints on the environment, you can use:

[extras]
security =
    aleph
    bet:python_version=='3.2'
    gimel:python_version=='2.7'
testing =
    quux:python_version=='2.7'

Testing

Deprecated since version 4.0.

As described in Features, pbr may override the test command depending on the test runner used.

A typical usage would be in tox.ini such as:

[tox]
minversion = 2.0
skipsdist = True
envlist = py33,py34,py35,py26,py27,pypy,pep8,docs

[testenv]
usedevelop = True
setenv =
  VIRTUAL_ENV={envdir}
  CLIENT_NAME=pbr
deps = .
     -r{toxinidir}/test-requirements.txt
commands =
  python setup.py test --testr-args='{posargs}'

The argument --coverage will set PYTHON to coverage run to produce a coverage report. --coverage-package-name can be used to modify or narrow the packages traced.

Sphinx conf.py

As described in Features, pbr provides a Sphinx extension to automatically configure the version numbers for your documentation using pbr metadata.

To enable this extension, you must add it to the list of extensions in your conf.py file:

extensions = [
    'pbr.sphinxext',
    # ... other extensions
]

You should also unset/remove the version and release attributes from this file.