[Distutils] virtual env with exec prefix

[Ian Bicking]

Hans Meine wrote:
> Hi Ian,
> 
> recently I reported this problem to you:
>> [...] here at our university, python (as
>> well as hundreds of other software packages) is installed in a shared NFS
>> tree with a clear separation of --prefix and --exec-prefix, i.e. all
>> platform-specific stuff goes into the according subdirectories.  [...]
> 
>> [2] meine at kogspc33:~ -> virtualenv enthought-inst
>> New python executable in enthought-inst/bin/python
>> Installing setuptools....
>>   Complete output from command enthought-inst/bin/python -c "#!python
>> \"\"\"Bootstrap setuptoo...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> " /software/python-2.4.4/SuSE-10...4.egg:
>>   error: invalid Python installation: unable to
>> open /software/python-2.4.4/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or
>> directory)
>>
>> [The message] is right, because it should be
>>   /software/python-2.4.4/SuSE-10.2/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile
>> which exists (in the SuSE-10.2 directory).
> 
> I have now debugged this a little bit (using virtualenv from SVN), and it 
> seems to be a problem with the virtualenv'd python and setuptools.  I have 
> written the EZ_SETUP_PY to disk, and when I mimick virtualenv's command for 
> installing setuptools, I get the error:
> 
> [2] meine at kogspc33:~/Programming/enthought -> 
> inst/bin/python ../ez_setup.py -v /home/meine/Programming/virtualenv-svn/support-files/setuptools-0.6c8-py2.4.egg
> error: invalid Python installation: unable to 
> open /software/python-2.4.4/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or 
> directory)
> 
> (NB: inst is the virtual env) OTOH, when I run this with the python binary 
> from its original location, it works fine.  Since the error comes from deep 
> within setuptools (AFAICS), should this be discussed on distutils-sig?

Hmm... well, does this error only happen when you create a virtualenv 
from within a virtualenv?  Otherwise, I think there's several things in 
distutils.sysconfig that need to be adjusted.  That module isn't really 
documented, however, and I suspect there's just a bunch of things that 
will have to be added to over time, not a good general fix.  Or... maybe 
there's some clever way to fix all these, but I'm not sure.

-- 
Ian Bicking : ianb at colorstudy.com : http://blog.ianbicking.org