Survey of complex usage of distutils.

[Fernando Perez]

Carl Banks wrote:

> A.M. Kuchling wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 May 2003 05:41:53 GMT,
>>        Carl Banks <imbosol at aerojockey.com> wrote:
>>> Because there was no way (as far as I could tell) for Python scripts
>>> to determine where the data files were installed, my setup.py usually
>>> had something like this following call to setup, which looked into the
>> 
>> What would you need to fix this?  Just the value of
>> install_data.install_dir?
> 
> No, it's not enough.  setup.py can accept arguments to install the
> data files somewhere other than than install_dir.  The designers of
> distutils gave it this capability, but evidently overlooked the fact
> that scripts have no way of knowing where the data files might have
> been installed.

Indeed, this is incredibly annoying.  You end up wondering 'where did all my
stuff go'?

> Some packages get around this limitation by installing data files
> alongside the .py files (for example, egenix packages).
> 
> If I had my wish, distutils would have an option to create (or fill
> in) an installinfo.py, with all kinds of install data, for the benefit
> of packages that need it.

In IPython, I'm using a distutils extension called install_data_ext, written by
Jack Moffit to address precisely this issue.  It might be worth folding this
functionality into distutils proper.  In the past I was using the same gross
hack as egenix, until Jack came around and wrote a clean solution.

Cheers,

f.