Ian Bicking wrote:

Setuptools and people using setuptools can only deal with actual issues, 
not with vague dislikes.  This is open source, issues get resolved, but 
there's never any guarantee that issues don't *exist*.

Hiya! I really like setuptools and the eggs and stuff. I want to help you out by giving you a specific user case. I don't fully understand setuptools, so I apologize in advanced for any errors.

I am a system administrator for several systems. I use a distro to manage most of my software, but obviously some python modules don't come with my distro (too new or the distro doesn't have it).

I usually solve this by doing the following as a non-root user:

$ /usr/bin/python setup.py install
--prefix=/usr/local/stow/projectname-version

$ cd /usr/local/stow

$ stow -D projectname-oldversion # optional -- removes old version

$ stow projectname-version

This allows me to keep the previous version around in case I need to roll back.

Here is a (trunicated) tree listing from trac project:
/usr/local/stow/trac-svn-r2824 |-- bin |-- lib | `-- python2.3 | `-- site-packages | `-- trac `-- share |-- man | `-- man1 `-- trac

Right now my workaround is to use bdist_egg and then copy the egg into the directory /usr/local/stow/project-version/lib/python2.4/site-packages (which I have to mkdir first). This isn't perfect because I don't get non-egg stuff, if any exists.

I hope that this helps you. ^_^

Ciao!

-- 
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate How.
	-- Frederick Winsor

The Doctor What: Need I say more?                http://docwhat.gerf.org/
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