Python3 Namespace Packages Using Wheels

I was experimenting with Python3.4 and namespace packages.

Here's what I did.

I created two completely separate repos, A and B.

I had a top level namespace, toplevel.

I created a directory structure:

repoA/toplevel/libA/moda.py

repoA/setup.py

repoB/toplevel/libB/modb.py

repoB/setup.py

The setup.py files were very similar:

from setuptools import setup

setup(

name = "toplevel libA",

version = "0.1",

packages = ['toplevel.libA']

)

and:

from setuptools import setup

setup(

name = "toplevel libB",

version = "0.1",

packages = ['toplevel.libB']

)

To be able to work with the bdist_wheel extension to setuptools, I

had to use pip to install wheel. | pip install wheel

Then in repoA and repoB it was possible to execute:

python setup.py bdist_wheel -d /tmp/wheels

In this way, two wheels were created:

/tmp/wheels/toplevel.libB-0.1-py3-none-any.whl

/tmp/wheels/toplevel.libA-0.1py3-none-any.whl

I then created a third project repo which used these two wheel packages. | repoC/someotherproject

In this repo, after creating and virtual envirionment, it was possible

to install the two wheels: | pip install /tmp/wheels/toplevel.libB-0.1-py3-none-any.whl

pip install /tmp/wheels/toplevel.libA-0.1py3-none-any.whl

In the site-packages directory of the repoC environment there was a tree structure installed: | ./toplevel/liba

/libb

Showing that libA and libB, although separately developed, were

available in the client project as a unified namespace. (Note that liba and libb could have been independently installed on different branches of sys.path and they would stilll appear to the interpreter as an integrated whole.)