Hi, Joe Gregorio has a fairly negative experience with easy_install here: http://bitworking.org/news/Please_stop_using_setuptools__at_least_exclusively__for_now____
I think his points boil roughly down to these: 1. (not directly related to his first comment, but I think this might be a source of problems) easy_install isn't always called easy_install. In my case I've wound up with easy_install.py on some systems at some point in the past. Would a possible solution be to allow "python -m easy_install"? Then again I think it's pretty consistent these days. 2. No --prefix option. I think this is a case of RTFM, since it's not normally as simple as specifying a prefix. Maybe a help message which explains why --prefix isn't supported might be useful? 3. In the error message he gets it shows bog standard distutils help, so he tries --help-commands and gets an error. I think this is a definite source of frustration. 4. He tries the --install-dir option which installs the package but of course this leads to a multi-install so he can't do a plain import foo. It might be good to link to http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#custom-installation-locations for an explanation here. 5. At this point he gives up and copies the source from svn. I think in all the above there is an element of RTFM but he does have a legitimate point when it comes to the command line help, based off that alone you aren't likely to figure out the best way to use easy_install if you are doing a non-system python install. I think a link to http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall in the help would work wonders. cheers, Michael _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
