Packaging klipper

Klipper is somewhat of a packaging anomaly among python programs, as it doesn't use setuptools to build and install. Some notes regarding how best to package it are as follows:

C modules

Klipper uses a C module to handle some kinematics calculations more quickly. This module needs to be compiled at packaging time to avoid introducing a runtime dependency on a compiler. To compile the C module, run python2 klippy/chelper/__init__.py.

Compiling python code

Many distributions have a policy of compiling all python code before packaging to improve startup time. You can do this by running python2 -m compileall klippy.

Versioning

If you are building a package of Klipper from git, it is usual practice not to ship a .git directory, so the versioning must be handled without git. To do this, use the script shipped in scripts/make_version.py which should be run as follows: python2 scripts/make_version.py YOURDISTRONAME > klippy/.version.

Sample packaging script

klipper-git is packaged for Arch Linux, and has a PKGBUILD (package build script) available at https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=klipper-git.