[Distutils] What's the difference between --index-url and --find-links?

[Eric Smith]

Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 1:38 AM, Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:
>> I understand that --index-url is single valued, and --find-links is
>> multi-valued. But what's the semantic difference between them? From my
>> reading, it sounds like they both point to pages that contain links to eggs
>> (or other distributions).
> 
> The index url contains an index page of packages, like
> http://pypi.python.org/simple/
> as defined here
> http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#package-index-api
> 
> When setuptools or easy_install are used, they load the index and look
> for packages
> using the INDEX/PACKAGE_NAME/ base for the url.
> 
> find-links will let you add extra links for setuptools to look at, so
> basically you
> can add any place that contains a flat list of distributions.
> 
> Notice that there's a patch that has been proposed so setuptools can handle
> several indexes.
> 
>> What I'm really trying to do is set up my own server, with my own collection
>> of eggs. I want to configure easy_install (via a config file or command
>> line) to only look at my collection of eggs, and never the Cheeseshop or
>> anywhere else. Do I do this with just --index-url? Or with --find-links, and
>> if so, how do I disable the index?
>>
> 
> You could build your own index, using static html files, or use one
> of the pypi compatible server applications out there, like EggBasket
> or PloneSoftwareCenter.
> 
> to make sure you don't use anything else than your server (even if some packages
> are trying to access other places with dependency links) you can use
> the --allow-hosts
> option to give a white list of urls patterns.

Awesome. Thanks for the help.

Eric.