+++ /dev/null
-This is versioncheck 1.0, a first stab at automatic checking of versions of\r
-Python extension packages installed on your system.\r
-\r
-The basic idea is that each package contains a _checkversion.py\r
-somewhere, probably at the root level of the package. In addition, each\r
-package maintainer makes a file available on the net, through ftp or\r
-http, which contains the version number of the most recent distribution\r
-and some readable text explaining the differences with previous\r
-versions, where to download the package, etc.\r
-\r
-The checkversions.py script walks through the installed Python tree (or\r
-through a tree of choice), and runs each _checkversion.py script. These\r
-scripts retrieve the current-version file over the net, compares version\r
-numbers and tells the user about new versions of packages available.\r
-\r
-A boilerplate for the _checkversion.py file can be found here. Replace\r
-package name, version and the URL of the version-check file and put it in\r
-your distribution. In stead of a single URL you can also specify a list\r
-of URLs. Each of these will be checked in order until one is available,\r
-this is handy for distributions that live in multiple places. Put the\r
-primary distribution site (the most up-to-date site) before others.\r
-The script is executed with execfile(), not imported, and the current\r
-directory is the checkversion directory, so be careful with globals,\r
-importing, etc.\r
-\r
-The version-check file consists of an rfc822-style header followed by\r
-plaintext. The only header field checked currently is\r
-'Current-Version:', which should contain te current version and is\r
-matched against the string contained in the _checkversion.py script.\r
-The rest of the file is human-readable text and presented to the user if\r
-there is a version mismatch. It should contain at the very least a URL\r
-of either the current distribution or a webpage describing it.\r
-\r
-Pycheckversion.py is the module that does the actual checking of versions.\r
-It should be fine where it is, it is imported by checkversion before anything\r
-else is done, but if imports fail you may want to move it to somewhere\r
-along sys.path.\r
-\r
- Jack Jansen, CWI, 23-Dec-97.\r
- <jack@cwi.nl>\r
- \r