pydistcheck

What is pydistcheck?

pydistcheck is a command line interface (CLI) that you run on Python packages, which can:

• detect common portability issues
• print useful summaries of the package's contents

It's inspired by R's R CMD check.

Supported formats:

• Python sdists
• Python wheels
• conda packages (both .conda and .tar.bz2)
• any .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, or .zip archive

See "How to Test a Python Distribution" to see how it and similar tools like auditwheel, check-wheel-contents, and twine check fit into Python development workflows.

For more background on the value of such a tool, see the SciPy 2022 talk "Does that CSV Belong on PyPI? Probably Not" (video link).

Installation

Install with pipx.

pipx install pydistcheck

Quickstart

Try it out on the test data in this project ...

pydistcheck tests/data/problematic-package-*

... to see the types of issues it checks for.

------------ check results -----------
1. [files-only-differ-by-case] Found files which differ only by case. Files: problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/Question.py,problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/question.PY,problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/question.py
2. [mixed-file-extensions] Found a mix of file extensions for the same file type: .NDJSON (1), .jsonl (1), .ndjson (1)
3. [mixed-file-extensions] Found a mix of file extensions for the same file type: .yaml (2), .yml (1)
4. [path-contains-non-ascii-characters] Found file path containing non-ASCII characters: 'problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/?veryone-loves-python.py'
5. [path-contains-spaces] Found path with spaces: 'problematic-package-0.1.0/beep boop.ini'
6. [path-contains-spaces] Found path with spaces: 'problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/bad code/'
7. [path-contains-spaces] Found path with spaces: 'problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/bad code/__init__.py'
8. [path-contains-spaces] Found path with spaces: 'problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/bad code/ship-it.py'
9. [unexpected-files] Found unexpected directory 'problematic-package-0.1.0/.git/'.
10. [unexpected-files] Found unexpected file 'problematic-package-0.1.0/.gitignore'.
11. [unexpected-files] Found unexpected file 'problematic-package-0.1.0/.hadolint.yaml'.
12. [unexpected-files] Found unexpected file 'problematic-package-0.1.0/problematic_package/.gitignore'.
errors found while checking: 12

And on a built distribution containing compiled objects ...

pydistcheck tests/data/debug-baseballmetrics*.whl

... pydistcheck can detect the inclusion of debug symbols (which increase distribution size).

checking 'tests/data/debug-baseballmetrics-0.1.0-py3-none-macosx_10_15_x86_64.macosx_11_6_x86_64.macosx_12_5_x86_64.whl'
------------ check results -----------
1. [compiled-objects-have-debug-symbols] Found compiled object containing debug symbols. For details, extract the distribution contents and run 'dsymutil -s "lib/lib_baseballmetrics.dylib"'.
errors found while checking: 1

checking 'tests/data/debug-baseballmetrics-py3-none-manylinux_2_28_x86_64.manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.whl'
------------ check results -----------
1. [compiled-objects-have-debug-symbols] Found compiled object containing debug symbols. For details, extract the distribution contents and run 'objdump --all-headers "lib/lib_baseballmetrics.so"'.
errors found while checking: 1

See https://pydistcheck.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ to learn more.

References

• Python packaging guides: https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/#