[Distutils] Having a Python package install itself under a different name

cool-RR cool-rr at cool-rr.com
Thu May 27 22:40:48 CEST 2010


Hello all!

I want to ask you a question regarding something I want to do with my app.
The reason I'm asking here is because I understand that Distribute somehow
installs itself as "setuptools". (I've never looked into the details of it.)
And I want something similar, so maybe you can advise me how to do it.

I'm developing a package called `garlicsim`. The package is intended for
Python 2.X, but I am also offerring Python 3 support on a different fork
called `garlicsim_py3`.(1)

So both of these packages live side by side on PyPI, and Python 3 users
install `garlicsim_py3`, and Python 2 users install `garlicsim`.

The problem is: When third party modules want to use garlicsim, they should
have one package name to refer to, not two. Sure, they can do something like
this:

    try:
        import garlicsim
    except ImportError:
        import garlicsim_py3 as garlicsim

But I would prefer not to make the developers of these modules do this.

Is there a way that `garlicsim_py3` will install itself under the alias
`garlicsim`? What I want is for a Python 3 user to be able to `import
garlicsim` and refer to the module all the time as `garlicsim`, but that it
will really be `garlicsim_py3`.

----------

(1) I've reached the decision to support Python 3 on a fork instead of in
the same code base; It's important for me that the code base will be clean,
and I would really not want to introduce compatibilty hacks.

Thanks,
Ram Rachum.
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