how to/help installing impure packages

[kyosohma at gmail.com]

On Oct 26, 12:35 pm, owl <john_now... at carleton.ca> wrote:
> I love easy_install.
>
> I love watching it search and complete.
> It's when it doesn't complete that causes me grief.
> I don't program a lot these days and am relatively new to python but I
> often wind up installing packages on both unix and windows machines
> and often the 'build' part of the install fails with not being able to
> find the compiler or compile problems.
>
> If there are any articles/pointers that talk about this, i.e. how to
> troubleshoot, I'd love to know.
>
> If I was writing such an article I'd start with:
> - how easy_install uses distutils (even this is an assumption on my
> part)
> - where it looks in the env. for stuff on both unix/linux/windows
> - what files to tweak to help it find stuff if your env. is different.
> - i.e. can I config some file to have packages not try and compile but
> use pure python if possible?
> - i.e. w/o speedups
> - how to work around problems such as easy_install failing because a
> site is down
> - i.e. how to manually download, 'unpack' & 'build'
> - since packages fail to build, how to set things up to download &
> keep things around when they fail so you can tinker with it until you
> get it working!
>
> I love python, and nothing against impure packages, but when they
> cause problems it starts to 'tarnish the dream' of an agnostic
> language.
>
> Thoughts?

You can check out the "official" website on Easy Install:

http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall

More informative links follow:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cppeak3.html
http://wiki.vpslink.com/index.php?title=Python_easy_install
http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/charming_python_b23.html

As for doing your own compiling, I have some instructions for using
the open source compiler, MinGW, on my website: http://www.pythonlibrary.org/distribution.htm

I should research this and add it to the page. But if you come up with
any tips or tricks, let me know and I'll put them on there.

Mike