[Distutils] inability to pass setup.py command line arguments to dependency setups

[Kent]

Consider the case where you want your setup to install third-party
software, but you want/need to pass an argument to the command line
that runs "python setup.py --argument install" or "python setup.py --
argument bdist_egg"

As far as I could research, this feature is unavailable.

If there is a graceful way to accomplish this I would really like to
know.  If there is no way, I offer a workaround to those who require
this functionality.

Consider a setup.py with the following setup() function call:

________________________________________________________________________________________
setup(
    name='pylotengine',
    version='0.1',
    description='',
    author='',
    author_email='',
    install_requires=[
        "SQLAlchemy >= 0.6",
        "tg.devtools >= 2.0.1",
...
...
)
________________________________________________________________________________________


Now, when SQLAlchemy is to be installed, there is a really nice
feature that can be enabled to build it with C extensions for
performance, so you want easy_install to run:
"python setup.py --with-cextensions bdist_egg"

instead of just:
"python setup.py bdist_egg"

In order to pass the "--with-cextensions" argument, I do the following
(again, not a very graceful solution):

________________________________________________________________________________________
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
try:
    from setuptools import setup, find_packages
except ImportError:
    from ez_setup import use_setuptools
    use_setuptools()
    from setuptools import setup, find_packages

#kb: since apparently setuptools has no mechanism to pass
# arguments to the dependencies, I am "decorating" the function
# that runs the command and adding the arguments myself...
from setuptools.command.easy_install import easy_install
normal_run_setup_fn = easy_install.run_setup
def setup_hook(self, setup_script, setup_base, args):
    # SQLAlchemy we want to run setup.py --with-cextensions
    if setup_script.find('/SQLAlchemy') > -1 and
setup_script.endswith('setup.py'):
        args.insert(0,'--with-cextensions')
    normal_run_setup_fn(self, setup_script, setup_base, args)
easy_install.run_setup = setup_hook


setup(
    name='pylotengine',
    version='0.1',
    description='',
    author='',
    author_email='',
    #url='',
    install_requires=[
        #kb start
        "SQLAlchemy >= 0.6",
        "tg.devtools >= 2.0.1",
        "psycopg2 >= 2.0.11",
...
...rest of setup() call...
 
________________________________________________________________________________________

Hope this is helpful to someone...