[Distutils] Breakage of fetch in setuptools-0.6a10-py2.4.egg

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 05:32 PM 3/25/2006 -0800, Grig Gheorghiu wrote:
>Hi, Philip
>
>2 questions:
>
>1. Is there any chance you can release a new setuptools version that
>includes the fix for the fetch breakage?

I expect to release that version within a week.  Nothing stops you, 
however, from using intermediate snapshots.  Run this command to create an 
egg in the current directory that's a snapshot of the current SVN version:

     easy_install -zmaxd. setuptools==dev

You can then distribute this egg with your package if needed, by passing 
the correct version info to the ez_setup() function in ez_setup.py (so it 
uses your copy of the snapshot.


>2. Another thing that seems to be broken, and that I was depending on
>in cheesecake, is installing a package to a non-default location via
>the --home option.
>
>I'm not sure when this started to break in terms of setuptools, but it
>used to work at least a couple of months ago. Now I get something
>similar to this when I try to run setuptools-based setup.py scripts
>with --home:
>
>================
>[ggheo at concord twill-0.8.4]$ python setup.py install
>--home=/tmp/install_twill/
>running install
>Checking .pth file support in /tmp/install_twill//lib/python/
>error: can't create or remove files in install directory
>
>The following error occurred while trying to add or remove files in the
>installation directory:
>
>     [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
>'/tmp/install_twill//lib/python/test-easy-install-12889.pth'
>
>The installation directory you specified (via --install-dir, --prefix,
>or
>the distutils default setting) was:
>
>     /tmp/install_twill//lib/python/
>
>This directory does not currently exist.  Please create it and try
>again, or
>choose a different installation directory (using the -d or
>--install-dir
>option).
>================
>
>Is there a better/less-prone-to-breakage way to test whether a package
>can be installed to an alternate location, other than using --home? I
>want this to work with distutils-based versions of setup.py too.

If you use --root instead of --home, it will work nicely with both, 
assuming you use the current SVN version of setuptools.  When setuptools' 
"install" command sees the --root option, it doesn't try to verify that the 
installation location is valid.  This should be ideal for your purposes, 
although you may have to fiddle with some of the other options a 
little.  --root also tells setuptools to use its "legacy installation" 
format, which will more closely mimic what the distutils would do in the 
same circumstances.