[Distutils] Odd limitation in packaging/distutils2

[Paul Moore]

On 2 November 2011 14:18, Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
>> PS D:\Data\PyPI> D:\Data\cpython\PCbuild\python -m packaging.run install nose
>> installing third-party projects from an uninstalled Python is not supported
> There is a comment in the source to explain that:
>
>  # Python would try to install into the site-packages directory under
>  # $PREFIX, but when running from an uninstalled code checkout we don't
>  # want to create directories under the installation root
>
> (Original bug report: #12246)
>
>> And yet after downloading the nose source...
>> [snip]
> Ah, I need to reopen the bug.  The patch edited d2.install but forgot to
> touch the install_commands.

I'm still a bit confused. This is on Windows, and maybe things are
different there, but installing seems to just work for me (except for
the case where things are to be downloaded). What problem should I
look for?

The reason I care is that installing packages into a dev build is
really useful for testing packaging changes. I'm not actually sure how
to turn a dev build into an installed build on Windows...

Paul.