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Possible Duplicate:
How to define multiline long_description in quickly's setup.py?

How can I make Quickly convert the long_description in setup.py into several paragraphs in the debian control file?

Quickly throws the error below if I put "\n" in the text, and every other way I try just leads to one long one-paragraph description (i.e. everything concatenated in a single paragraph).

Generally - can we use any type of markup - bullets, etc.? I see some entries in USC that use bullets in the description, so it must be possible.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/python-mkdebian", line 366, in <module>
    egg = get_egg_info()
  File "/usr/bin/python-mkdebian", line 35, in get_egg_info
    k, v = l.strip().split(': ', 1)
ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack
Community
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Peter Levi
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  • I checked that one first. I don't ask about multiline in the python code, but multi-paragraph in the resulting generated long description (in the debian/control file, and subsequently in what is seen in Software Center) – Peter Levi Aug 13 '12 at 19:18
  • In that case, could you please edit the question so that what you're asking is more clear? The title clearly asks about long_description in setup.py, and there is no mention at all about the debian/control file or what you're trying to do with it. Thanks! – David Planella Aug 14 '12 at 06:53

1 Answers1

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The descriptions you see in the software center, are not from the setup.py (or other similar files), for the application. Those are defined in the packaging itself, which is on the server.

In the debian/control file, you need to separate each paragraph with a line which contains only a period at the beginning, and every line except the leading one-line summary, must have a single space at the beginning.

You should use the standard multi-line string formatting of Python for the long_description in setup.py, and should simply have a blank line between paragraphs there. If you're using multiple string literals, rather than the triple-quote literals, you should have an empty string for the blank lines to separate the paragraphs.

dobey
  • 40,982
  • Actually, they do come from setup.py. Any of the Quickly packaging commands read the file, extract the description and put it in debian/control – David Planella Aug 14 '12 at 06:50
  • Using triple-quote multi-line strings for long_description yields the same error from Quickly as in the question. If I use multiple string literals and I leave empty strings to separate paragraphs, then they are completely lacking from the resulting text in debian/control. Can you give an example for the long_description=XXXXX text in setup.py which actually generates a proper multi-paragraph text in debian/control (with single periods for the blank lines)? (edits: typos, grammar...) – Peter Levi Aug 14 '12 at 20:04
  • If it doesn't work, then perhaps you are hitting a bug in the python-mkdebian script, and should file a bug against it. – dobey Aug 15 '12 at 15:33