[Distutils] distutils and the development process

[est@hyperreal.org]

est@hyperreal.org discourseth:
>
> Yes, this solves my problems.  I feel stupid. :)

I take that back.

I have two major continued problems even when I do, "export
PYTHONPATH=build/lib:build/platlib".

1) When developing in the top-level directory of a distribution, the
current directory still comes first in sys.path, so python still
thinks the package source directory (with its __init__.py) is where
the package lives.

2) Even when executing an example script in a sub-directory, python
gets the idea that the package is in build/lib and doesn't find it's
extension submodules.  If I copy those over to the build/lib
subdirectory they are found.

I see the PyXML distribution does not pretty things to control where
the extension modules are built, probably for these reasons.  Does
everyone who has extension modules in their packages have to do that?

A final note, even if these problems didn't exist, I'd really prefer
not to have to do "python setup.py build" before I test any change to
a .py file.  I don't want the `compile' back in the edit/compile/debug
cycle for .py files.

If I think of good strategies for dealing with these problems, I'll
post them.  In the meantime, it's back to Makefiles for me. :)

Eric