[Python-Dev] how GNU stow is complementary rather than alternative to distutils (original) (raw)

P.J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Sun May 10 20:48:46 CEST 2009

At 12:04 PM 5/10/2009 -0600, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:

The thing that prevents this from working with setuptools is that setuptools creates a file named easyinstall.pth during the "python ./ setup.py install --prefix=foo" if you build two different Python packages this way, they will each create an easyinstall.pth file, and then when you ask GNU stow to link the two resulting packages into your system, it will say "You are asking me to install two different packages which both claim that they need to write a file named '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/easyinstall.pth'.

Adding --record and --single-version-externally-managed to that command line will prevent the .pth file from being used or needed, although I believe you already know this.

(What that mode won't do is install dependencies automatically.)

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