manage.py¶
Synopsis¶
manage.py [--help] [--version] [options]
Description¶
Per-provider management script
This manual page documents the typical aspects of the manage.py file initially generated for each Plainbox provider by plainbox startprovider. It is not to be confused by manage.py files used by web applications written using the Django framework.
Options¶
Optional arguments:
--version | show program’s version number and exit |
-v, --verbose | be more verbose (same as –log-level=INFO) |
-D, --debug | enable DEBUG messages on the root logger |
-C, --debug-console | |
display DEBUG messages in the console | |
-T, --trace | enable DEBUG messages on the specified logger (can be used multiple times) |
-P, --pdb | jump into pdb (python debugger) when a command crashes |
-I, --debug-interrupt | |
crash on SIGINT/KeyboardInterrupt, useful with –pdb |
Sub-Commands¶
- manage.py info [-h]
- display basic information about this provider
- manage.py validate [-h] [-s] [-d] [-l] [-L]
- perform various static analysis and validation
- manage.py develop [-h] [-u] [-f] [-d DIRECTORY]
- install/remove this provider, only for development
- manage.py install [-h] [–prefix PREFIX] [–layout {flat,unix}] [–root ROOT]
- install this provider in the system
- manage.py sdist [-h]
- create a source tarball
- manage.py i18n [-h] [-n] [–dont-update-pot] [–dont-merge-po] [–dont-build-mo]
- update, merge and build translation catalogs
- manage.py build [-h]
- build provider specific executables from source
- manage.py clean [-h]
- clean build results
- manage.py packaging [-h]
- generate packaging meta-data
Working With Providers¶
Plainbox is pretty flexible and allows developers and tests alike to work with
providers in several different ways. First of all, providers are typically
packaged into Debian packages. Such packages are installed in system-wide
locations (look at the output of ./manage.py install --help
).
One particular file that is a part of such providers, that you don’t typically
see in the source directory, is a file with the extension .provider
.
Plainbox looks for files like that in several places (see plainbox(1)
discussion of PROVIDERPATH). When working on a provider (either writing a new
provider from scratch or extending an existing provider) that would be a quite
tedious process to go through. For that you can use the manage.py develop
command to create a .provider
file in your
$XDG_DATA_HOME/plainbox-providers-1/
directory. Plainbox will automatically
pick it up and and you will be able to run jobs from it directly, without
having to reinstall.
Caveats¶
The behavior of each management script may be different. Plainbox offers APIs to extend or override available commands so this man page should be seen as a spiritual intent rather than concrete behavior.
Building Provider-Specific Executables¶
Plainbox assists in building provider-specific executables. Those are additional architecture-specific binary executables that can be used in job scripts.
Typically such additional executables are written in C and built with make. If your provider doesn’t require any sophisticated build system then all you need to do is to create a src/ directory (alongside all the other provider directories) and create at least the following files inside:
- Makefile:
- The makefile that will build your executables. This assumes it is not
generated (for example, with automake). It should place resulting
executables int the current directory. It will be invoked from a
different directory though, with
make -f /path/to/Makefile
, so be aware of that when writing your rules. Fortunately makefiles tend to just work so this is not an issue in practice. - EXECUTABLES:
- This file lists all the executables (one per line) that will be built by the particular build system. It is used to ensure that Plainbox knows up front about executables built from source and to know which files to copy.
- (sources):
- You obviously need to provide source files for your executables. Just add
them alongside all the other files in the
src/
directory.
Once that is done, you should be able to run ./manage.py build
. It will
attempt to identify the build system that is being used (it understands C, go
and autotools, to some extent) and then carry on to build everything as
expected.
Resulting executables will be placed in build/bin
. When working in
development mode (via manage.py develop
) that will all magically just work.
Plainbox will figure out where each executable is, coping with files both in
build/bin
and in bin/
directories transparently. When installing
(manage.py install
) either locally or as a part of the packaging step that
will also just work so you don’t have do do anything else.
Overriding / Extending Commands¶
Plainbox offers a decorator that can be used to extend any of the manage.py
subcommands with additional functionality. The general syntax for extending
existing commands is (here illustrated by changes to the sdist
command):
from plainbox.provider_manager import SourceDistributionCommand
from plainbox.provider_manager import manage_py_extension
@manage_py_extension
class SourceDistributionCommandExt(SourceDistributionCommand):
__doc__ = SourceDistributionCommand.__doc__
def invoked(self, ns):
super().invoked(ns)
# Do something else as well
Note that in some cases you need to define the command name to match the original command name (for example, the install command requires this). Otherwise Plainbox will derive the command name from the class name which may be not what you expected:
from plainbox.provider_manager import InstallCommand
from plainbox.provider_manager import manage_py_extension
@manage_py_extension
class InstallCommandExt(InstallCommand):
__doc__ = InstallCommand.__doc__
name = 'install'
Further Reading¶
The Checkbox project comes with a number of providers that use various niche
and under-documented features. It’s always good to learn from existing
examples. Have a look at the project source directory, go to providers/
and explore each provider there.