newbie question: On installation of additional packages to Python

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:36:34 -0200, Nasser Abbasi <nma at 12000.org> escribió:

> I am running on windowz. I have downloaded and installed 2.5.1 Python.
>
> my question is on installing additional packages.
>
> What is the easiest way to do that?  I read about python 'eggs' (like jar
> files for Java), and easyInstall script, and such.

Once you have setuptools installed, it's as easy as executing:  
easy_install packagename
The alternative is to find and download the package yourself, unzip in a  
temporary directory, and execute: setup.py install
For most packages that's all that is required.

> Is there some automated way to install Python packages? a  
> manual/document I
> could read that describes step by step how to do that? Browsing the
> documentation, there does not seem to be something specific there (other
> than saying download this tar file and install it).
>
> I like how one can install additional packages in 'R' . In 'R' one can do
> all that from the user interface for R by a pull-down menu, then one  
> selects
> a mirror site, then one can see all the packages available, then select  
> the
> package to download, and the rest is done automatically. (The package is
> downloaded, installed, etc...)

That's mainly what easy_install does, plus dependency checking.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina