Sorry about the wall of text, but I am trying to provide a good background to my question. Actually, there are like a million questions here because I am utterly confused. I recently learned some Python programming and made a Windows application. Now I want to implement that app and a few other ideas for Ubuntu and release them as open source GPL-3. Although, I would like to keep the code possible to run on any system (or at least both Ubuntu and Windows).
So to learn how Ubuntu packaging works, I've looked at the quickly application used in the App Developer Showdown recently. But the folder structure and the files it creates makes no sense at all to me. So I read the Ubuntu Packaging Guide and the Applicaton Review Process with all the links there, as well as the Debian Python Policy. But all that text just worked to make me more confused about the way quickly creates files and folders.
The quickly way?
So, this is what I understand from quickly (assuming my project name is proj):
proj/bin = one single file that will be copied to /usr/share/bin/proj.py to enable running the app from a global path? But that would be in violation of the "Application Review Process" rules, right?
proj/data/* = files that should go under /usr/share/proj/*, right? But that would also be in violation of the "Application Review Process" rules?
proj/help/C/* = some HTML documentation, I think, which should go under /usr/share/doc/proj/ and that works well with "Application Review Process", but why is the folder name "C" and not just "proj"?
proj/tests/ = some sort of files for a "test" package within Python. I guess this is great, looking forward to learn what it is.
proj/proj/ = some files that just seem to link to new files in the proj_lib folder? Seems unnecessary, and I don't understand why these are here at all.
proj/proj_lib/ = the actual source code, I guess?
Then quickly also creates proj/apport and proj/etc/apport* which I have no idea what they do or why they are added.
Now, the really confusing part is the file structure. It looks like nothing I have seen before. And to be honest, it looks very complicated in an unnecessary way. Below this section I will describe the way I would make my own project file structure, which may help describe why this is so confusing to me. But first, my understanding of the quickly way (note that my understanding may be wrong at this point).
First of all, the setup.py. This file contains a function called update_config() which just loads another file called proj/proj_lib/projconfig.py. But that config.py-file doesn't seem to contain anything that would be useful to keep separate from the setup.py? Actually, there are a lot of things that I've never seen anyone suggest to put in a setup.py-file before. The setup.py also contains a hard coded file name pointing to the SVG icon, and otherwise just copies the desktop.in-file on itself so why not just have the changes made directly in the desktop.in-file without this function in setup.py? Then there is another function to create a subdirectory proj/data/share/proj and copy the desktop.in-file there, which I don't understand the purpose of? Why have a function that does that when you can just have the file there originally? Then after all of this nonsensical code comes something that actually looks like a regular setup.py.
Now the proj/bin/proj.py, which I assume is supposed to be used to start the application? This just seems to remap /usr/ to /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/ in a previously undeclared syspath variable. So I guess this is to accomodate the rules in the "Application Review Process" for apps that are using folder names standard for all other Linux flavors? Fair enough, I don't understand it but I can live with that. After this remapping of directories, this file goes on to call on proj/proj/init.py.
proj/proj/__init__.py is the standard way to define how to start a module, I guess? But instead of having some code which actually does something, this file just goes on to in turn run the main window class, which is located in yet another file.
proj/proj_lib/ also has an init.py-file which I don't understand the purpose of. Then there is a Window.py which seems to contain the actually functionality of the application, and calls other window py-files like about dialog etc.
The way I did my app
My folder structure looks like this:
proj/
proj/ui
proj/imageformats # necessary for imports to work
proj/sqldrivers # necessary for imports to work
In the proj/ folder I have my setup.py and my proj.py which starts my app. In my proj.py file I have all the main window functionality, calling some other windows and functions with imports, and at the end of this file is the main() function which starts the app.
The proj/ui/ folder contains all my .ui files made with Qt Designer.
The other folders are just there to provide some files which will make the application work when packaged with py2exe for Windows. Basically, they are the files that would be provided through dependencies in Ubuntu.
Note that this setup I have works great for Windows development. I use py2exe to build an executable that ends up in a proj/dist/ folder, and I can just copy the files in this folder and it will work on any Windows machine.
How do I combine this?
I have spent a few days trying to read documentation. There is hardly anything I can find on quickly, except the basic tutorial and the stuff on App Developer Showdown Workshops. I can't find anything there that helps me make sense of the folder structure suggested by quickly.
From what I have read, I could use os.environ['HOME'] to create a path to ~/.config/proj.conf on Ubuntu or C:/Users/username/.config/proj.conf on Windows. That far I can keep to cross platform code. But then with the division into /bin and /etc and /opt I will start to run into some problems. Of course, I could as a last resort keep two copies of the code - one set up for Ubuntu and one set up for Windows. But then I would still want a similar folder structure to make the transfer of code changes easy.
There should be someone who already has a good solution for this. And perhaps that person could also (besides giving an example of how to make it cross-platform) describe why there is such a long chain of files calling other files calling other files in the default quickly setup? Of course, I am now assuming that quickly uses some sort of recommended model for Ubuntu. If that is not the case, I would like to get suggestions on what would be a recommended folder structure to distribute an application through Ubuntu repositories?
