[Distutils] --always-copy, development eggs

[Ian Bicking]

So, I'm trying to achieve a couple different things with workingenv, and 
I'm not sure how to make it all work...

I don't want one workingenv to have unintentional links to package in 
another environment.  Sometimes easy_install will find a package 
somewhere else on the system, which is fine, but I want it to copy it 
into the workingenv.  I thought the easy thing was to add 
"[easy_install] always_copy = True" to distutils.cfg.  And this works.

*But* always_copy doesn't work with develop eggs.  So specifically 
there's a problem if I want to install both distribution A and B as 
editable/develop eggs, and B depends on A.  I can install (via setup.py 
develop) A, and then install B, but B fails with something like
      error: Could not find suitable distribution for 
Requirement.parse('A==0.1') (--always-copy skips system and development 
eggs)

Note that 'A==0.1' is something easy_install/setuptools came up with, B 
only requires 'A'.

So, it seems having always_copy on really gets in the way of development 
eggs.  Is there another way I can avoid sharing packages without 
always_copy?  Or... something, I'm not sure.

-- 
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org