[Distutils] Setuptools with custom path configuration

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 10:18 PM 10/30/2006 -0500, Jean-Paul Calderone wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:43:07 -0400, Jean-Paul Calderone 
><exarkun at divmod.com> wrote:
> >On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:32:13 -0400, "Phillip J. Eby" 
> <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >>You're right, this configuration isn't really supported well.  easy_install
> >>expects non-PYTHONPATH site dirs to be supported by Python itself, not by a
> >>PYTHONPATH dir causing the other one to be loaded.  I'll have to see 
> about a
> >>fix.
> >>
> >
> >Okay, thanks.  Let me know if there's anything I can do to help; 
> testing, etc.
> >
>
>Had a chance to do anything with this yet?

No.  It's probably as simple as removing the -E from the test code, but I 
need to check my assumptions and make sure there isn't some other reason -E 
is needed.  It's on my list for when I get back to work on setuptools 
stuff, hopefully later this week.  A bunch of people at OSAF are currently 
blocked on other work I'm doing for them, so setuptools ATM is lower on my 
priority list, as is pretty much any other programming work.

Of course, if somebody else wants to hazard an investigation into what, if 
anything, might be broken by removing the -E, ...  oh crap.

There's probably a heck of a lot simpler way to fix this: use the 
--site-dirs option to easy_install, or set it in a distutils configuration 
file.  Duh.  I should've thought of suggesting that before.  Here's the bit 
from the docs:

``--site-dirs=DIRLIST, -S DIRLIST``   (New in 0.6a1)
     Specify one or more custom "site" directories (separated by 
commas).  "Site" directories are directories where ``.pth`` files are 
processed, such as the main Python ``site-packages`` directory.  As of 
0.6a10, EasyInstall automatically detects whether a given directory 
processes ``.pth`` files (or can be made to do so), so you should not 
normally need to use this option.  It is now only necessary if you want to 
override EasyInstall's judgment and force an installation directory to be 
treated as if it supported ``.pth`` files.

I should probably still look into removing the -E, but this is probably a 
sufficient immediate workaround for your current situation.  Sorry I didn't 
think of it before.