Part 1: Setting up your development environment

1. Install required tools:

   • Ensure Python is installed on your system.
   • Install Git and create a GitHub account if you haven't already.
   • Install your preferred text editor or IDE (e.g., Visual Studio Code, PyCharm).

2. Create a virtual environment:

   • Open your terminal or command prompt.
   • Navigate to your project directory and run python -m venv env.
   • Activate the virtual environment: source env/bin/activate.
   • Install essential packages: pip install pytest sphinx.

Part 2: Developing the Python package

1. Create the package structure:

   • Inside your project directory, create a new directory for your package (e.g., mypackage/).
   • Inside mypackage/, create an __init__.py file and other module files (e.g., core.py).

2. Write basic module code:

   • Implement a simple function in core.py - for example, a function to calculate the mean of a list of numbers.

Part 3: Using Pytest for unit testing

1. Write tests:

   • Create a tests/ directory.
   • Inside tests/, create test files starting with test_ (e.g., test_core.py).
   • Write test functions to check the correctness of your package functions.

2. Run tests:

   • Execute the tests using pytest by running pytest in your terminal.

Part 4: Using Sphinx for documentation

1. Setup Sphinx:

   • Run sphinx-quickstart in your project directory.
   • Follow the prompts to set up your project (e.g., project name, author).

2. Document your code:

   • Use reStructuredText to write documentation in the docs/ directory.
   • Include docstrings in your module files for automatic documentation generation.

3. Build the documentation:

   • Run make html inside the docs/ directory to generate HTML documentation.

Part 5: Using Git for version control

1. Initialize Git repository:

   • Run git init to initialize a new Git repository.
   • Add a .gitignore file to exclude the env/ directory and other non-essential files (e.g., *.pyc, __pycache__/).

2. Commit and push your changes:

   • Add your changes using git add .
   • Commit the changes with git commit -m "Initial commit"
   • Link your local repository to GitHub with git remote add origin [your-repository-url].
   • Push your commits with git push -u origin main.

Part 6: Configure GitHub Actions

1. Create GitHub Actions workflow:

   • In your GitHub repository, create a .github/workflows/ directory.
   • Add workflow file(s) (e.g., python-package.yml) to run tests across multiple Python versions.

2. Set up actions for documentation and deployment:

   • Add a workflow file to build documentation and push it to GitHub Pages.
   • Add a workflow file to publish your package to Test PyPI upon tagging a release.

Part 7: Finalizing and review

1. Tag a release:

   • After testing and final revisions, tag your release using git tag v1.0.0.
   • Push tags with git push --tags.

2. Publish on Test PyPI:

   • Configure a proper pyproject.toml file for distribution.
   • Run python -m twine upload --repository testpypi dist/* to upload the package.

Solution

See https://github.com/pcafrica/python_package_example/.