[Distutils] setuptools vs distribute on Debian

[Manlio Perillo]

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No, this is not a flame.

I'm on Debian Squeeze and I noticed this strange thing:

$sudo easy_install -U setuptools
install_dir /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/
Searching for distribute
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/distribute/
Reading http://packages.python.org/distribute
Best match: distribute 0.6.14
Processing distribute-0.6.14-py2.6.egg
distribute 0.6.14 is already the active version in easy-install.pth
Installing easy_install script to /usr/local/bin
Installing easy_install-2.6 script to /usr/local/bin

Using /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.6.egg
Processing dependencies for distribute
Finished processing dependencies for distribute


Now, I read that this is a Debian policy: for some reasons they force me
to use distribute instead setuptools.

However, I *do* want to use setuptools, and I'm unable to do what I want.
I checked the "fake" setuptools source code but I can't see what I need
to modify in order to get setuptools when I ask for setuptools.



By the way, I suspect there is a bug in Debian setuptools:

    if dist.key=='distribute':
        # Ensure that setuptools itself never becomes unavailable!
        # XXX should this check for latest version?
        filename = os.path.join(self.install_dir,'setuptools.pth')
        if os.path.islink(filename): os.unlink(filename)
        f = open(filename, 'wt')
        f.write(self.pth_file.make_relative(dist.location)+'\n')
        f.close()

However if `easy_install setuptools` is an alias for
`easy_install distribute`, that code may not executed (?)



Thanks  Manlio
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