Add Professional Packaging Infrastructure and CI/CD Pipeline for PyPI Distribution

[rsp2k]

📦 Add Professional Packaging Infrastructure and CI/CD Pipeline

This PR transforms the project into a professionally packaged Python project with comprehensive testing and CI/CD infrastructure, making it ready for PyPI distribution.

🎯 Overview

This PR adds a complete packaging and testing ecosystem that enables:

• Professional Distribution: Package can be built, installed, and distributed via PyPI
• Cross-Platform Testing: Automated testing on Ubuntu, Windows, and macOS
• Modern Tooling: Uses UV for fast, reliable dependency management
• Quality Assurance: Comprehensive packaging tests and validation
• Instant Usage: Users can run uvx mcp-crawl4ai-rag without installation

📋 Key Changes Made

1. Entry Point Configuration

• ✅ Added [project.scripts] section to pyproject.toml
• ✅ Configured "mcp-crawl4ai-rag" entry point to launch crawl4ai_mcp:main
• ✅ Users can now run mcp-crawl4ai-rag command after installation

2. Professional Package Structure

• ✅ Reorganized code into proper src/crawl4ai_mcp/ package structure
• ✅ Added __init__.py with proper imports and version information
• ✅ Fixed relative imports to use package-qualified imports
• ✅ Maintains backward compatibility while enabling proper packaging

3. Comprehensive CI/CD Pipeline (.github/workflows/)

• ✅ Multi-platform testing: Ubuntu, Windows, macOS
• ✅ Multi-version testing: Python 3.12 and 3.13
• ✅ Modern tooling: UV for dependency management and package installation
• ✅ Three specialized jobs:
  • test-packaging: Full packaging lifecycle testing
  • test-import: Minimal import verification
  • validate-config: Configuration validation
• ✅ PyPI Deployment: Automated publishing on tag creation

4. Professional Testing Suite (tests/test_packaging.py)

• ✅ Package Building: Tests wheel generation with python -m build
• ✅ Import Validation: Verifies main function is importable
• ✅ Installation Testing: Tests package installation and import
• ✅ Configuration Validation: Validates pyproject.toml structure
• ✅ Cross-platform compatibility: Windows and Unix-specific approaches

5. Build System Configuration

• ✅ Added [build-system] configuration for setuptools
• ✅ Proper [tool.setuptools] package discovery configuration
• ✅ Package data inclusion for all Python files

🚀 User Benefits

⚡ Instant Run (Recommended)

# Run directly without installation - UV handles everything!
uvx mcp-crawl4ai-rag

Perfect for: Testing, one-time usage, or keeping your system clean

📦 Traditional Installation

# Install globally
pip install mcp-crawl4ai-rag

# Then run anywhere
mcp-crawl4ai-rag

Perfect for: Regular usage, integration with other tools

🏃‍♂️ UV Installation (Fastest)

# Install with UV (faster than pip)
uv pip install mcp-crawl4ai-rag

# Run the server
mcp-crawl4ai-rag

Perfect for: UV users who want the fastest installation

🔧 Technical Highlights

UV-First Approach

• Modern Python package manager for speed and reliability
• Consistent across development, testing, and CI environments
• Proper virtual environment handling and caching
• uvx support: Users can run the server instantly without installation

Cross-Platform Compatibility

• Windows: PowerShell shell, UTF-8 encoding, platform-specific file handling
• macOS/Linux: Bash shell with native wildcard expansion
• Platform Detection: Smart handling of OS-specific requirements

Comprehensive Test Coverage

1. Configuration Validation: pyproject.toml structure and entry points
2. Build Testing: Wheel generation and integrity
3. Installation Testing: Package installation across platforms
4. Import Testing: Module importability and function availability
5. Entry Point Testing: Command availability in PATH

📊 Test Matrix

Platform	Python 3.12	Python 3.13
Ubuntu Latest	✅	✅
Windows Latest	✅	✅
macOS Latest	✅	✅

Total: 6 test combinations + specialized validation jobs

🛠️ Files Added/Modified

• ✅ pyproject.toml - Added build system and entry point configuration
• ✅ .github/workflows/build-test.yml - Complete CI/CD pipeline
• ✅ .github/workflows/deploy-pypi.yml - PyPI deployment workflow
• ✅ tests/test_packaging.py - Comprehensive packaging test suite
• ✅ test_packaging_local.sh - Local testing script
• ✅ src/crawl4ai_mcp/__init__.py - Package initialization
• ✅ src/crawl4ai_mcp/crawl4ai_mcp.py - Main module (restructured)
• ✅ src/crawl4ai_mcp/utils.py - Utilities module (moved)
• ✅ DEPLOYMENT.md - Deployment and usage instructions

🎉 Ready for Production

This PR makes the project ready for:

• ✅ PyPI Distribution: Professional packaging standards
• ✅ Instant Execution: Single-command usage with uvx
• ✅ User Installation: Simple pip install workflow
• ✅ CI/CD Integration: Automated quality assurance
• ✅ Cross-platform Deployment: Reliable operation everywhere

🔌 MCP Client Integration

The uvx approach makes integration incredibly simple:

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl4ai-rag": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-crawl4ai-rag"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio"
      }
    }
  }
}

Benefits of uvx Approach

• ✅ Zero Installation Friction - Try immediately without setup
• ✅ Always Latest Version - UV fetches the newest release automatically
• ✅ Isolated Execution - No global package pollution
• ✅ Consistent Across Platforms - Same command works everywhere

🧪 Testing

All tests can be run locally with:

# Quick local test
./test_packaging_local.sh

# Or run the full test suite
uv run python tests/test_packaging.py

The MCP server can now be distributed, installed, and used as a professional Python package with confidence in its reliability across all major platforms. Users can start using it immediately with a single uvx command!

---

Note: This PR includes recent PyPI packaging standards and practices for modern Python distribution, making the package ready for immediate publication to PyPI.

[rsp2k]

@coleam00 Thank you for your work! I started looking at the code because I wanted to run with uvx from pypi, then saw there were several PR's and no tests. Since the PR's are idle, I'm going to try and pull them into this new testable environment so they can be further reviewed once they pass basic tests.

[coleam00]

Thank you so much for this PR @rsp2k ! This MCP has started as something more experimental that I later want to turn into Archon V2 (lot of work happening for that behind the scenes), hence quite a few pending PRs and no tests.

The plan is to move this into Archon at some point and there I'll have a comprehensive test suite and will certainly be incorporating what you have done here, so thank you!