[issue8668] Packaging: add a 'develop' command

[Éric Araujo]

Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> added the comment:

[Carl]
> there's an implicit assumption that a .pth file is the most likely
> strategy.
If you have other ideas, please share them.

[another message]
> I don't see why the installation-location-finding for develop should
> be any different than for a normal "pysetup install".
It’s only a technical limitation for now: the develop command is currently a standalone command, so it has to decide where to write stuff.  If it were an option to install_dist instead of a standalone command, then it would have paths processing already written.

Higery changed his code recently to get paths from the install_dist command instead of requiring site-packages.  (You can read the reviews, if you don’t mind style comments mixed with more important issues.)

> Does "pysetup install" install to global site-packages by default, or
> try to find somewhere it can install without additional privileges?
The install action can have a different behavior than the install_dist command.  develop is only a command now, and I agree it should behave like install_dist (which it now does).

> (though I don't really see the value in "arbitrary locations", since
> you then have to set up PYTHONPATH manually anyway).
We don’t know what people do, what with /opt installs and plugins and whatever, so there’s just no value in not allowing any path for install.

> Certainly "develop" should support PEP 370, ideally with the same
> command-line flag as a regular install.
Yes.

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue8668>
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