Python Eggs Just install in *ONE* place? Easy to uninstall?

[John J. Lee]

"seberino at spawar.navy.mil" <seberino at spawar.navy.mil> writes:

> It appears that apps distributed as Python Eggs are either a single
> compressed
> blob in site-packages directory or a directory under site-packages
> directory.
> 
> Is this ALWAYS true?

No.


> So by just erasing stuff under site-packages
> I can do a COMPLETE uninstallation of an Egg?

Essentially, yes -- if that's where you installed it.  (but there's
also an entry in easy-install.pth)

OTOH, python setup.py install *will* in general install other stuff,
outside of site-packages (or whatever directory you picked).  There's
no uninstall command (although Phillip Eby is planning on implementing
just that in setuptools/easy_install 0.7, and of course today you can
already use e.g. bdist_wininst or bdist_rpm and use a system package
manager to install and uninstall -- IIUC those commands will install
(and uninstall) eggs if the setup.py uses setuptools).

Eggs are not an installation format: and other formats do exist -- for
example, "python setup.py develop" on a setuptools-based project will
give you an egg installed via an .egg-link file.

By the way, the distutils-sig mailing list is a good place to ask
these questions.


John