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Here's a patch that adds support for xz compression:
http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/python/current/SOURCES/Python-2.6.1-distutils-xz-support.patch?view=log 

Good idea !
are you able provide a unit test for the changes made into the two
commands ?

hmm, I'm unsure about how this should be done..
I guess such a test would belong in Lib/distutils/test_dist.py, but I'm
uncertain about how it should be done, ie. should it be a test for doing
'bdist', 'bdist_rpm' and 'sdist' for each of the formats supported? I
cannot seem to find any tests for the currently supported formats and
such tests would introduce dependencies on the tools used to compress
with these formats..

> I guess such a test would belong in Lib/distutils/test_dist.py
no, rather in test_bdist_rpm, test_sdist and so on,
but I can do it, it'll just take more time.

distutils2 uses tarfile now instead of external programs. Adding dependency on another bug.

FTR, the distutils2 repo is http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distutils2. distutils2.tests.support contains helper to create temp directories and run commands; see docstrings and example uses in the tests for more info.

distutils2/packaging now just uses the shutil functions. I’ll make a patch for shutil after tarfile is updated.

This not-so-bad patch adds lzma compression support to the shutil functions, under the 'xztar' name. Please review.

I should add that a doc update will be part of the next patch.
In parallel, I’ve also started updating packaging to add lzma support to the bdist command, but the situation is very disappointing: tarfile knows what format it supports, shutil has its own list, and packaging has a few duplicates too! Ideally, tarfile should have an attribute to expose what compression formats are available, then shutil would reuse that, and packaging would just call shutil. (I’m not even talking about the duplication in the doc.) If you agree with the general idea, I’ll open reports to a) add the attribute to tarfile b) rework the (luckily internal) registries in shutil to stop being hard-coded c) remove packaging’s registries.

> This not-so-bad patch adds lzma compression support to the shutil functions, under the 'xztar' name. Please review.
Functionally, the patch looks good to me. There are some docstrings that
should probably be updated, though:
- _make_tarball (the 'compress' argument)
- make_archive
- _unpack_tarfile
- unpack_archive
> Ideally, tarfile should have an attribute to expose what compression formats are available, then shutil would reuse that, and packaging would just call shutil.
+1

a) is #14013; b) is #14011.
If Lars agrees to #14013, I will withdraw this patch in favor of another one that would make shutil automatically support all compressors that tarfile supports (my b) point).
Note that this is not going to be pain-free, as for example bzip2 compression is obtained with the strings "bz2", "bzip2", "bzip" or "bztar" depending on the modules; I think it’s worth it nonetheless, even if I have to add an ugly conversion in shutil for compat.

I have a working updated shutil module, tests pass and the documentation is improved. I will make sure to make different commits for improving the tests, cleaning up some things, adding tarfile.compression_formats and removing duplication in shutil (see dep bugs), to be sure not to introduce regressions.
Before I finish and post the patch, I’d like feedback on a choice I made. I don’t think it’s possible to have shutil automatically support all the formats that tarfile does, because of the spelling issue I mentioned. Here’s what the code would look like (let me know if I should post it elsewhere or as a file to let you get syntax coloring):
 
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS = {}
 _UNPACK_FORMATS = {}
 for fmt in tarfile.compression_formats:
 code = fmt + 'tar'
 ext = '.' + fmt
 desc = "%s'ed tar file" % fmt
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS[code] = (_make_tarball, [('compress', fmt)], desc)
 _UNPACK_FORMATS[code] = ([ext], _unpack_tarfile, [], desc)
 # kludge to add alternate extension
 if 'gztar' in _ARCHIVE_FORMATS:
 _UNPACK_FORMATS['gztar'][0].append('.tgz')
 # XXX desc should say "gzip'ed tar file", not "gz'ed"
 # rectify naming incompatibility
 if 'bz2tar' in _ARCHIVE_FORMATS:
 # XXX alternative: make 'bztar' alias for 'bz2tar', but would complicate
 # manipulating the registries
 del _ARCHIVE_FORMATS['bz2tar']
 del _UNPACK_FORMATS['bz2tar']
 desc = "bzip2'ed tar file"
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS['bztar'] = (_make_tarball, [('compress', 'bz2')], desc)
 _UNPACK_FORMATS['bztar'] = (['.bz2'], _unpack_tarfile, [], desc)
 # now add uncompressed tar and zip file
I really don’t like that code. Given that tarfile is not extensible at run time, it is not a big deal to have to update shutil whenever we add a compression format to tarfile. Therefore, I backtracked on my "automatic support" idea but kept a lot of cleanup in did in the code. Here’s what the code looks like:
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS = {}
 _UNPACK_FORMATS = {}
 if 'xz' in tarfile.compression_formats:
 desc = "xz'ed tar file"
 # XXX '.xz' is not great, '.tar.xz' would be better
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS['xztar'] = (_make_tarball, [('compress', 'xz')], desc)
 _UNPACK_FORMATS['xztar'] = (['.xz'], _unpack_tarfile, [], desc)
 if 'bz2' in tarfile.compression_formats:
 desc = "bzip2'ed tar file"
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS['bztar'] = (_make_tarball, [('compress', 'bz2')], desc)
 _UNPACK_FORMATS['bztar'] = (['.bz2'], _unpack_tarfile, [], desc)
 if 'gz' in tarfile.compression_formats:
 desc = "gzip'ed tar file"
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS['gztar'] = (_make_tarball, [('compress', 'gz')], desc)
 _UNPACK_FORMATS['gztar'] = (['.gz', '.tgz'], _unpack_tarfile, [], desc)
So, do you agree that "not automated but not ugly" is better than "automated with ugly klutches"?

s/cleanup in did in the code/cleanup I did in the code/

Note that there is a way to get fully automated support for tar formats: tarfile could expose, in addition to the list compression_formats, another structure with the descriptions (e.g. "gzip’ed tar file") and file extensions (e.g. ['.gz', '.tgz'] —no, it’s not '.tar.gz', which is unfortunate, and could cause Lars to reject that idea). I’m just putting this here for reference, but my preference is still for the second idea I talk about in my precedent message.

> So, do you agree that "not automated but not ugly" is better than "automated with ugly klutches"?
Definitely. If we have to add special cases that are almost as long as
the original code, the "automation" seems pointless.
> Note that there is a way to get fully automated support for tar formats: tarfile could expose, in addition to the list compression_formats, another structure with the descriptions (e.g. "gzip’ed tar file") and file extensions (e.g. ['.gz', '.tgz'] —no, it’s not '.tar.gz', which is unfortunate, and could cause Lars to reject that idea). I’m just putting this here for reference, but my preference is still for the second idea I talk about in my precedent message.
As much as it would be nice to have all of the information centralized in
one place, I don't think this is practical - some of the data that would
be stored in this structure really is specific to shutil, so I agree that
your second option is better.
I think we can restructure the code a bit to reduce the work involved in
adding a new format, though. Maybe something like this:
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS = {}
 _UNPACK_FORMATS = {}
 for name, tarname, progname, extensions, desc in [
 ("xz", "xztar", "xz", [".xz"], "xz'ed tar file"),
 ("bz2", "bztar", "bzip2", [".bz2"], "bzip2'ed tar file"),
 ("gz", "gztar", "gzip", [".gz", ".tgz"], "gzip'ed tar file")]:
 if name in tarfile.compression_formats:
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS[tarname] = _make_tarball, [("compress", progname)], desc
 _UNPACK_FORMATS[tarname] = extensions, _unpack_tarfile, [], desc
By the way, is there any reason why you've used ".gz" instead of
".tar.gz" as the extension for "gztar" in your proposed change? The
current version of shutil.py uses ".tar.gz", but has ".bz2" for "bztar".
Also, I notice that _make_tarball() will need to be updated to add the
info for xz to the tar_compression and compress_ext dictionaries. It
seems a bit ugly to duplicate this information when it's already present
in the format dicts, so maybe it would be better to pass the file
extension in directly instead? I assume that _make_tarball() is not part
of shutil's public API.
If we did this, there would be no need for a separate "progname" field
in the initialization code I suggested above:
 for name, tarname, extensions, desc in [
 ("xz", "xztar", [".xz"], "xz'ed tar file"),
 ("bz2", "bztar", [".bz2"], "bzip2'ed tar file"),
 ("gz", "gztar", [".gz", ".tgz"], "gzip'ed tar file")]:
 if name in tarfile.compression_formats:
 _ARCHIVE_FORMATS[tarname] = _make_tarball, [("compress", name)], desc
 _UNPACK_FORMATS[tarname] = extensions, _unpack_tarfile, [], desc

For the "xztar" format, you should also perhaps recognize the ".txz"
extension - I've seen this used by FreeBSD.

> I think we can restructure the code a bit to reduce the work involved in adding a new format, though.
> Maybe something like this: [snip]
Thanks, I’ve applied your obvious refactor in my clone :) For clarity, I will split my patch into many patches for different reports (bug fixes and doc improvements for 3.2, then code cleanup in 3.3, then adding xz).
> By the way, is there any reason why you've used ".gz" instead of ".tar.gz" as the extension for "gztar"
> in your proposed change? The current version of shutil.py uses ".tar.gz", but has ".bz2" for "bztar".
Yes, I confused the two formats. I reported the '.bz2' bug (should be '.tar.bz2') and will fix it.
> Also, I notice that _make_tarball() will need to be updated to add the info for xz to the tar_compression
> and compress_ext dictionaries.
I ripped them off. I could have pasted my full patch to save you time, sorry!
> For the "xztar" format, you should also perhaps recognize the ".txz" extension
Done. Google finds a number of matches. I won’t add '.tbz' though, as I don’t know if it’s bzip or bzip2, and as it does not seem used much.

I have not seen this issue and was created a new issue16313 with almost same patch as Eric's one (only I have changed the documentation too). Here's the patch. I wonder that it was not committed yet to 3.3. I think it would be better first to add xz support and the code cleanup to do then (if it takes so much time).

Oh, I see the '.bz2' bug. Patch updated.

Éric, what’s your take on this approach (not code)? We have time enough till 3.4 but it seems this doesn't really move forward. Any thoughts how to get this moving? Unfortunately I'm not invested enough in this to make a educated decision.

I will upload my patch and compare it with Serhiy’s. Now that 3.3.0 is released, there is no hurry.

3.4 beta 1 will be soon.

Serhiy's patch needs a "versionchanged" or "versionadded" tag in the Docs.

> Serhiy's patch needs a "versionchanged" or "versionadded" tag in the Docs.
Done.

Now 3.4 is released, but shutil still doesn't support the xz compression. I think we should hurry on to be in time for 3.5.

> I think we should hurry on to be in time for 3.5.
Your patch looks ok to me. Just update the version number in the docs ;)

Éric?

I’m afraid I changed computers once or twice since I worked on that, so I can’t readily find my clone and get the latest patch. I know where the hard drives are but I can’t say when I will have time to search them.

New changeset e57db221b6c4 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Issue #5411: Added support for the "xztar" format in the shutil module.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/e57db221b6c4 

Thank you Serhiy! You need to fix the version number in the "versionchanged".

New changeset a47996c10579 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Issue #5411: Fixed version number.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/a47996c10579 

Oh, my fault. Thank you Antoine!

sphinx generates warning for the current docs introduced by this issue:
 WARNING: Explicit markup ends without a blank line; unexpected unindent.
I've uploaded a documentation patch that fixes it.

Fixed. Thanks for the patch, Akira.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/7fcfb634ccca