[SciPy-user] egg dependency?

[Pearu Peterson]

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Travis Oliphant wrote:

> John Hunter wrote:
>
>> I just tried to install the new scipy 0.6.1 on my ubuntu linux, and
>> got hit with
>>
>> peds-pc311:~/python/src/scipy_core-0.6.1> spsi
>> Running from scipy core source directory.
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "setup.py", line 38, in ?
>>    setup_package()
>>  File "setup.py", line 7, in setup_package
>>    from scipy.distutils.core import setup
>>  File "/home/jdhunter/python/src/scipy_core-0.6.1/scipy/distutils/core.py", line 42, in ?
>>    from setuptools.command import bdist_egg, develop, easy_install, egg_info
>> ImportError: cannot import name bdist_egg
>>
>> If the goal is to make scipy core as easy to install as Numeric, is it
>> wise to require an egg dependency? In my understanding, egg still has
>> installation issues of it's own -- eg, it is not installed with the
>> python2.4 in Ubuntu Hoary, which is only 6-7 months old.
>>
> This is a mistake.  My understanding is that setuptools is "supported by
> not required."   Any setuptools dependency should be handled more
> gracefully.  I suspect the issue is that you have setuptools installed
> but an older version then expected, perhaps?
>
> I'm not sure, I didn't add this code.   See if you can comment-out that
> line and continue.

Without looking into details much, this demonstrates well the evilness of 
using  `try: .. except: ..` blocks when checking the availability of 
packages. Sure, it's very convinient but there are always (or will be) 
cases where this sugar fails (or will so). Ahh, I find repeating myself again..

Pearu