We are experiencing a problem related to symbolic links in our source tree/sdist that appears to breaking easy_install (using setuptools-0.6c9). To produce the bug::

jdhunter@bic128:~> PYTHONPATH=~/dev/lib/python2.5/site-packages:/home/jdhunter/devez/lib/python2.5/site-packages ~/dev/bin/easy_install --prefix=~/devez matplotlib Searching for matplotlib Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/matplotlib/ Reading http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net Reading https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80706&package_id=... Reading https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80706&package_id=... Reading http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80706 Best match: matplotlib 0.98.5 Downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/matplotlib/matplotlib-0.98.5.tar.gz?modtime... Processing matplotlib-0.98.5.tar.gz Running matplotlib-0.98.5/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-qW11xj/matplotlib-0.98.5/egg-dist-tmp-QFgBsw ..snip snip [Edit setup.cfg to suppress the above messages] ============================================================================ error: lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template: No such file or directory Exception exceptions.OSError: (2, 'No such file or directory', 'src/image.cpp') in <bound method CleanUpFile.__del__ of <setupext.CleanUpFile instance at 0x7f022cf378c0>> ignored Exception exceptions.OSError: (2, 'No such file or directory', 'src/path.cpp') in <bound method CleanUpFile.__del__ of <setupext.CleanUpFile instance at 0x7f022cf35d40>> ignored Exception exceptions.OSError: (2, 'No such file or directory', 'src/backend_gdk.c') in <bound method CleanUpFile.__del__ of <setupext.CleanUpFile instance at 0x7f022ab83e18>> ignored Exception exceptions.OSError: (2, 'No such file or directory', 'src/backend_agg.cpp') in <bound method CleanUpFile.__del__ of <setupext.CleanUpFile instance at 0x7f022cf37710>> ignored jdhunter@bic128:~>

The file which triggers the first error is matplotlib.conf.template, which exists in lib/matplotlib/mpl-data. There is a symlink in doc/mpl_data which points to lib/matplotlib/mpl-data. Eg in the mpl src tree::

jdhunter@bic128:mpl> ls -ld lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/ doc/mpl_data lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdhunter jdhunter 27 Jun 2 2008 doc/mpl_data -> ../lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/ drwxrwxr-x 6 jdhunter jdhunter 4096 Dec 10 13:09 lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/

When we create the sdist, here is the output matching that file::

jdhunter@bic128:mpl> python setup.py sdist > sdist.out jdhunter@bic128:mpl> grep matplotlib.conf.template sdist.out hard linking doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.template -> matplotlib-0.98.5/doc/mpl_data hard linking lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template -> matplotlib-0.98.5/lib/matplotlib/mpl-data

In the tarball, the link looks backwards to me: the tarball says lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template links to doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.template and has zero content

jdhunter@bic128:tmp> tar tvfz matplotlib-0.98.5.tar.gz |grep matplotlib.conf.template -rw-r--r-- cmoad/staff 13838 2008-12-09 17:53 matplotlib-0.98.5/doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.templatehrw-r--r-- cmoad/staff 0 2008-12-09 17:53 matplotlib-0.98.5/lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template link to matplotlib-0.98.5/doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.template

If you unpack the tarball using a standard incantation, a copy is made::

jdhunter@bic128:tmp> tar xfz matplotlib-0.98.5.tar.gz jdhunter@bic128:tmp> cd matplotlib-0.98.5/ jdhunter@bic128:matplotlib-0.98.5> ls -ld doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.template lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template -rw-r--r-- 2 jdhunter jdhunter 13838 Dec 9 17:53 doc/mpl_data/matplotlib.conf.template -rw-r--r-- 2 jdhunter jdhunter 13838 Dec 9 17:53 lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf.template

I think (guess) what may be happening is that setuptools are reading the tarball using the python tarfile reader and the link is getting botched. However, I *can* read the "missing" file using tarfile::

In [17]: import tarfile

In [18]: t = tarfile.open('dist/matplotlib-0.98.5.tar.gz')

In [19]: o = t.extractfile('matplotlib-0.98.5/lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlib.conf')

In [20]: s = o.read()

In [21]: print s[:80] # MPLConfig - plaintext (in .conf format)

# This is a sample matplotlib configu

So I am not sure exactly what is going wrong but I think broken handling of the link is playing a role. I will probably work around this by removing the links and making hard copies myself before building the sdist and eggs, unless I hear something more intelligent from someone or come up with something better.