How can I make this long_description and README differ by a couple of sentences?

Question

For a package of mine, I have a README.rst file that is read into the setup.py's long description like so:

readme = open('README.rst', 'r')
README_TEXT = readme.read()
readme.close()

setup(
    ...
    long_description = README_TEXT,
    ....
    )

This way that I can have the README file show up on my github page every time I commit and on the pypi page every time I python setup.py register. There's only one problem. I'd like the github page to say something like "This document reflects a pre-release version of envbuilder. For the most recent release, see pypi."

I could just put those lines in README.rst and delete them before I python setup.py register, but I know that there's going to be a time that I forget to remove the sentences before I push to pypi.

I'm trying to think of the best way to automate this so I don't have to worry about it. Anyone have any ideas? Is there any setuptools/distutils magic I can do?

Answer 1

You can just use a ReST comment with some text like "split here", and then split on that in your setup.py. Ian Bicking does that in virtualenv with index.txt and setup.py.