Convert README.md to rst in setup.py

[dhimmel]

Currently, the package description on PyPI displays the raw markdown text from README.md. This occurs because PyPI only accepts reStructuredText for package descriptions. This pull request enables formatted descriptions for future PyPI releases by converting the README to rst.

Pandoc is used for the conversion. If pandoc is not installed, then the markdown README is passed to long_description. I've looked into several solutions to the README formatting issue with PyPI and think this is the best. As long as the machine which builds the package to send to PyPI has Pandoc, the PyPI page will be pretty.

[dhimmel]

Note if you want to use Pandoc on Travis (pending #86). The pandoc version available from the Ubuntu precise channel is too old to perform this conversion (it has a bug).

Therefore, you can add the following lines to your .travis.yml:

dist: trusty
sudo: false
addons:
  apt_packages:
    - pandoc

This options will use trusty rather than precise and automatically install pandoc. This will come in handy if you want to use Travis to automate PyPI deployment (may not be a good idea for security critical repositories).

[matejcik]

it's now possible to use Markdown on PyPI, if you specify long_description_content_type="text/markdown" in setup.py

[dhimmel]

Closing this as it's superseded by #172 / 45be64a.