collective.checkdocs adds new distutils commands checkdocs and showdocs to validate restructured text in long_description field of Python eggs. This package aims to make Python egg help page publishing and editing easier.

Eggs' long description field, which is usually also the README.txt file of the package, is reST formatted text. This text is converted to HTML to show on the package page when package is published in distribution repositories like PyPI or plone.org. Unfortunately, since repositories do poor job to validate incoming reST text, errors in the text will result to broken published package pages.

Unpublishing is usually very cumbersome. We save our time by validating reST input using checkdocs and showdocs commands before submitting eggs to PyPi.

Installation

Install this to your development Python run-time:

easy_install collective.checkdocs

Note: On OSX at least Python version 2.5 or newer is required.

New commands

The following commands will be added to all setup.py installers.

checkdocs

Run long_description through reST to HTML converter and print errors and warnings to the standard output.

Any errors or warnings will cause distutils to abort.

Example:

python setup.py checkdocs
<string>:4: (WARNING/2) Inline literal start-string without end-string.
error: long_description had reST syntax errors

showdocs

Run long_description through reST to HTML converter and display the result in a local web browser. Runs a web server in port 6969 until CTRL+C is pressed.

Example:

python setup.py showdocs
running showdocs
reST to HTML conversion available at at http://localhost:6969/ - press CTRL+C to interrupt

Source code

• https://github.com/collective/collective.checkdocs

Authors

Mikko Ohtamaa

Resources

• long_description text is restructured formatted
• docutils
• rstctl (inspiration and sources)
• How it all begun

License

The project is licensed under the GPLv2.