I'be been learning about setuptools and eggs and am very pleased. There is one area where I'd like to see a small tweak.
In: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#custom-installation-locations four options are presented for installing outside of Python installation. Naturally, I prefer the the last option, which the documentation recommends against. :) Here's why. An important use case to me is the ability for a developer to work in a development sandbox without affecting anything outside the sandbox. The solution needs to be cross platform. The "Administrator Installation" option doesn't work for me because it requires modifying the Python setup. Neither the "Mac OS X "User" Installation" nor the 'Creating a "Virtual" Python' options work for me because they are not cross platform. I also find the "Virtual Python" approach a bit heavy handed. In playing a bit, I find the "Traditional" PYTHONPATH-based Installation works pretty well except for the problem of having to set the path manually when invoking scripts. This problem could be addressed by having the generated scripts include the custom path settings. I recommend adding two new options to the easy_install section of the configuration file: script_path A list of paths, separated by commas to be added to sys.path by generated scripts. script_pth_files A list of pth files, separated by commas to be added be processed by script files. Generated scripts would include code to manipulate sys.path based on this information. So, for example, in a workspace with a 'lib' directory containing eggs, I'd have: [easy_install] site_dirs = '/here/lib' script_path = '/here/lib' script_pth_files = '/here/lib/easy-install.pth' The script_pth_files option is needed, I think, to avoid hardcoding the setuptools egg path in the generated scripts. Note that it could be argued that the site_dirs option should be enough and that generated scripts should simply reflect this option. Thoughts? For now, I can create a wrapper around easy_install that does custom script generation, which could serve as a prototype for the proposed change. Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
