I was finally able to determine the reason. I am installing a specialized 'install' command with the argument 'cmdclass={"install": install}' to setup(). I've attached a revised case which demonstrates the problem.

In my specialized 'install' class I try to wrap the normal installation command by calling setuptools.command.install.install, but apparently that's not enough. What should I call to invoke the normal installation command?

Thanks,
Arve

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Arve Knudsen <arve.knudsen@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Arve Knudsen <arve.knudsen@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 2:24 PM, P.J. Eby <pje@telecommunity.com> wrote:
At 01:42 PM 12/14/2010 +0100, Arve Knudsen wrote:
Hi

Using Distribute in my setup.py, how do I best ensure that pkg_resources gets installed along with my package? I've tried 'install_requires=["setuptools>=0.6"]' as an argument to setup(), but setuptools didn't get installed.


I don't know about Distribute, but it should definitely get installed if you're using setuptools.  Under what installation scenario(s) did setuptools *not* get installed?

Basically, my project bundles Distribute through distribute_setup.py, so Distribute doesn't need to be preinstalled. When I try to install my project (through 'python setup.py install') on a machine without setuptools/pkg_resources installed, however, setuptools does not get installed.

I'll try to reduce this to a simple case, i.e. a dummy project that requires setuptools.

This is strange, with a super-simple case (see attachment), Distribute gets installed without even having to state install_requires. Apparently, Distribute is supposed to install itself automatically. I wonder what goes wrong in my more elaborate project..

Arve