John Salerno wrote: > Here's my new project: I want to write a little script that I can type > at the terminal like this: > > $ scriptname package1 [package2, ...] > > where scriptname is my module name and any subsequent arguments are the > names of Linux packages to install. Running the script as above will > create this line: > > sudo aptitude install package1 package2 ... > > It will run that line at the terminal so the package(s) will be installed. > > Now, the extra functionality I want to add (otherwise I would just > install them normally!) is to save the package names to a text file so I > can now the names of programs I've manually installed, if I ever want to > check the list or remove packages. > > So creating the proper bash command (sudo aptitude install ...) is easy, > and writing the names to a file is easy. But I have two questions: > > 1. First of all, does Linux keep track of the packages you manually > install? If so, then I won't have to do this at all. > > 2. Assuming I write this, how do output the bash command to the > terminal? Is there a particular module that Python uses to interact with > the terminal window that I can use to send the install command to the > terminal?
I don't know the answer to the first bit here, but I think the following should get you most of what you want as far as the second bit is concerned: ---------------------------- scriptname.py ---------------------------- import argparse # http://argparse.python-hosting.com/ import subprocess import sys def outputfile(filename): return open(filename, 'w') if __name__ == '__main__': # parse the command line arguments parser = argparse.ArgumentParser() parser.add_argument('packages', metavar='package', nargs='+', help='one of the packages to install') parser.add_argument('--save', type=outputfile, default=sys.stdout, help='a file to save the package names to') namespace = parser.parse_args() # call the command command = ['sudo', 'aptitude', 'install'] + namespace.packages subprocess.call(command) # write the package name file for package_name in namespace.packages: namespace.save.write('%s\n' % package_name) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- $ scriptname.py -h usage: scriptname.py [-h] [--save SAVE] package [package ...] positional arguments: package one of the packages to install optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --save SAVE a file to save the package names to STeVe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
