[Python-Dev] setuptools in 2.5. (original) (raw)

Ian Bicking ianb at colorstudy.com
Sat Apr 22 02:47:57 CEST 2006

Paul Moore wrote:

And no, I don't want to install the 2 versions side-by-side. Ian Bicking complained recently about the "uncertainty" of multiple directories on sys.path meaning you can't be sure which version of a module you get. Well, having 2 versions of a module installed and knowing that which one is in use depends on require calls which get issued at runtime worries me far more.

These are valid concerns. From my own experience, I don't think setuptools makes it any worse than the status quo, but it certainly doesn't magically solve these issues. And though these issues are intrinsically hard, I think Python makes it harder than it should. For instance, if you really want to be confident about how your libraries are layed out, this script is the most reliable way: http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/virtual-python.py

It basically copies all of Python to a new directory. That this is required to get a self-consistent and well-encapsulated Python setup is... well, not good. Maybe this could be fixed for Python 2.5 as well -- to at least make this isolation easier to apply.

-- Ian Bicking / ianb at colorstudy.com / http://blog.ianbicking.org

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