Information for developers of zest.releaser
===========================================

Needed python
-------------

The tests currently pass on python 2.4.5, 2.5.4 and 2.6.3.  Using
2.6.2 specifically will give test failures.


Needed programs
---------------

To run the tests, you need to have the supported versioning systems
installed: svn, hg (mercurial) and git.  There may be test failures
when you have different versions of these programs.  In that case,
please investigate as these may be genuine errors.


Needed setuptools
-----------------

You also need setuptools or distribute in your system path.  This is
because we basically call 'sys.executable setup.py egg_info' directly
(in the tests and in the actual code), which will give an import error
on setuptools otherwise.  There is a branch with a hack that solves
this but it sounds too hacky.


Needed configuration
--------------------

For mercurial you may get test failures because of extra output like
this::

  No username found, using 'name@domain' instead.

To avoid this, create a file ~/.hgrc with something like this in it::

  [ui]
  username = Author Name <email@address.domain>

If you keep having problems, `Ubuntu explains it
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mercurial>`_ quite good.

There is a similar problem with bazaar.  Since bzr version 2.2, it
refuses to guess what your username and email is, so you have to
set it once, like this, otherwise you get test failures:

  bzr whoami "Author Name <email@address.domain>"

For release testing we expected a functioning .pypirc file in your
home dir, with an old-style configuration, but the tests now use an
own config file.
