[Distutils] A problem with setuptools, virtualenv and numpy

[David Cournapeau]

Christian Marquardt wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've run into the following problem:
>
>  - I have numpy (v1.3.0b1) successfully installed in my system's
>    site-packages (for Python 2.5.2).
>  - I have setup a virtual environment (with virtualenv 1.3.3) which
>    uses the systems site-packages; in particular, I can load numpy
>    when working in that environment.
>  - I have a (namespaced) package which requires numpy (via 
>    "install_requires = ['numpy']" in the setup() of setuptools 
>    (v0.6c9, as coming with virtualenv), and try to build that in 
>    the virtual environment using the usual python setup.py install.
>  - When processing the requirements for the packages, setuptools
>    downloads a fresh copy from numpy 1.3.0b1 from Pypi and tries 
>    to install it - although numpy is already available in the system
>    wide site-packages directory.
>
> To me, that's a bug, but I would like to know if it is a bug in numpy 
> (which might not support setuptools in the correct way) or setuptools
> which tries to install an already existing package.
>   

If you want setuptools 'support', I think you should install numpy
through the setupegg.py script.

cheers,

David