SageNB -- Use pkg_resources to locate DATA directory

[TimDumol]

pkg_resources is the official way to access data directories in a setuptools package. Using pkg_resources to locate the DATA directory will allow us to use .pth files for ease of development. For example:

$ pwd
/home/timdumol/devel/sagenb-0.3.5/src
$ dev_dir=`pwd`
$ cd /opt/sage/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/
$ rm -r sagenb*
$ cat "$dev_dir" > sagenb.pth

Thus, there will no longer be a need to sage -python setup.py install after every change.

CC: @qed777

Component: notebook

Keywords: sagenb notebook

Author: Tim Dumol

Reviewer: Mitesh Patel

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/7402

[TimDumol]

Uses pkg_resources to locate the DATA directory.

[TimDumol]

comment:1

Attachment: trac_7402-pkg_resources.patch.gz

This patch should do it.

As a note, we won't even need to restart the server if all we edit are template files. A big plus in ease of development, IMHO.

[TimDumol]

Changed keywords from none to sagenb notebook

[TimDumol]

Author: Tim Dumol

[qed777]

Reviewer: Mitesh Patel

[qed777]

comment:2

This works for me. In particular, the Se test suite is oblivious to the change.

For me, an existing site-packages/sagenb takes precedence over sagenb.pth. Short of deleting the former, can we reverse this? How about a flag (e.g, --dev-mode or --in-source) to sage -python setup.py install that toggles between "standard" and "developer" modes?

[qed777]

comment:3

A Sphinx warning to keep in mind:

copying static files... WARNING: static directory '/home/apps/sage/local/lib/python/site-packages/sagenb/data/jsmath/' does not exist

[TimDumol]

comment:4

Replying to @qed777:

A Sphinx warning to keep in mind:

copying static files... WARNING: static directory '/home/apps/sage/local/lib/python/site-packages/sagenb/data/jsmath/' does not exist

Since this is only used for development, I don't think there's much of a problem. It should be possible to fix by making Sphinx read the .pth file and look there, but I am inexperienced regarding that.

Regards the --dev-mode thing, I just noticed that SageNB uses disttools, not setuptools, which is why the sage -python setup.py develop command does not exist. This is now #7467.