Question

i am trying …

loadRecipe('existingpackage')
class NewPackage(PackageRecipe):
    name = 'newpackage-test'
    p = existingpackage.version
    print p

but getting error, that existingpackage is not defined

Answer 1

You got it right that loadRecipe needs the name of the package. But to access information from the recipe, you should use the class defined there, not the package name or the recipe filename. (That’s also quite natural. Sometimes recipes can define more than one classes.)

For example, in a firefox plugin, I want the version of firefox, so that the plugin can be installed to the right place.

loadRecipe('firefox')
class FirefoxPackageSearch(PackageRecipe):

    [snip]

    def setup(r):
        [snip]
        r.macros.ff_version = '.'.join(FireFox.version.split('.')[:2])

I load the firefox recipe and use Firefox.version to get what I want.