.. image:: https://secure.travis-ci.org/cournape/Bento.png :alt: Travis CI Build Status

Bento is an alternative to distutils-based packaging tools such as distutils, setuptools or distribute. Bento focus on reproducibility, extensibility and simplicity (in that order).

Packaging is as simple as writing a bento.info file with a file which looks as follows::

Name: Foo
Author: John Doe

Library:
    Packages: foo

The package is then installed with bentomaker, the command line interface to bento::

bentomaker install

Installing

To install bento, you can either:

* install bento from itself (recommended)::

    python bootstrap.py
    ./bentomaker install

* install bento using setuptools (not recommended)::

    python setup.py install

Python3 support

Bento supports python 3 as is, so there is no need to run 2to3 on it (doing so will probably break it).

Development

Bento discussions happen on the bento Mailing list ([email protected], archive on bento-ml). To subscribe, you simply need to send an email to the list. Development is on github. Bugs should be reported on bento issue-tracker. Online documentation is available on github as well.

Why you should use bento ?

* Straightfoward package description, in an indentation-based syntax
  similar to python
* Simple packages can have their setup.py automatically converted through
  the 'convert' command
* Distutils compatibility mode so that a bento package can be installed
  through pip
* Adding new commands is simple
* Pluggable build-backend: you can build your C extensions with a real
  build system such as waf or scons.
* Easy to customize install paths from the command line, with sensible
  defaults on every platform
* Installing data files such as manpages, configuration, etc... is
  straightforward and customizable through the command line
* Supports all python versions >= 2.4 (including 3.x)
* Designed with reproducibility in mind: re-running the same command twice
  should produce the same result (idempotency)
* Preliminary support for windows installers (.exe), eggs and mpkg.

But bento does more:

* Designed as a library from the ground up, with a focus on robustness and
  extensibility:

    * new commands can be inserted before/after an existing one without
      modifying the latter (no monkey-patching needed)
    * easy to add command line options to existing commands
    * each command has a pre/post hook
    * API designed such as commands need to know very little from each other.
    * Moving toward a node-based architecture for robust file location
      (waf-based design)
    * No global variable/singleton in bento itself

* Easily bundable, one-file distribution to avoid extra-dependencies when
  using bento. You only need to add one file to your sources, no need for
  your users to install anything.
* Basic support for console scripts ala setuptools
* Dependency-based extension builders (source content change is
  automatically rebuilt)
* Parallel build support for C extensions
* Low-level interface to the included build tool to override/change any
  compilation parameter (compilation flag, compiler, etc...)

Planned features:

* Reliable and fast (parallel) 2->3 convertion.
* Support for msi packages
* Reliable conversion between packaging formats on the platforms where it
  makes sense (egg <-> wininst, mpkg <-> egg, etc...)
* Provide API to enable Linux distributors to write simple extensions for
  packaging bento-packages as they see fit
* Infrastructure for a correctly designed package index, using
  well-known packaging practices instead of the broken easy_install + pypi
  model (easy mirroring, enforced metadata, indexing to enable
  querying-before-installing, reliable install, etc...).

WHILE BENTO IS ALREADY USABLE, IT MAY STILL SIGNIFICANTLY CHANGE IN BACKWARD INCOMPATIBLE WAYS UNTIL THE FIRST ALPHA.

.. _github: http://github.com/cournape/Bento.git .. _issue-tracker: http://github.com/cournape/bento/issues .. _documentation: http://cournape.github.com/Bento .. _bento-ml: http://librelist.com/browser/bento