[Distutils] Unable to build language-check

[Erik Bray]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Sijo Jose <mailtosijojose at gmail.com> wrote:
> The language-check (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/language-check)library has
> the dependency of '3to2' in python 2.7,
> In a virtualenv it works fine with pip,that is
>
> pip install  3to2
> pip install language-check
>
>
> But its failing with easy_install in venv
>
> easy_install 3to2
> easy_install language-check (It fails)
>
> Due to this I'm not able to build my project using setuptools.

After trying it myself and looking at the resulting traceback, I see
what's going on here.

language-check performs some extensive shenanigans to run 3to2 on its
code, and somewhere along the line it assumes that 3to2 is installed
in a directory.  However when you install it with easy_install, it is
installed as an egg by default.  And since it is marked zip-safe it's
installed as a zipped egg file instead of a directory.

My recommendation for installing your package is to run `pip install
.`, rather than `./setup.py install`, which there is a movement to get
away from.  Only installing with pip will get you out of a lot of
trouble you might run into with easy_install.

If you *must* use easy_install run it with -Z, at least when
installing 3to2, to make sure it's installed unzipped.  You might also
raise the issue with the developers of language-check since this is a
bug in their setup.py.

Best,
Erik