easy_install -f confusion
Jeff Hammel and myself were going over a problem with -f seemingly being ignored in easy_install, and it took us a while to realize that you have to do something like "easy_install -f 'url1 url2 ...'", and you can't do "easy_install -f url1 -f url2".
It's literally been years that I've been unaware of this, and confused by the results. I think easy_install should give an error if you provide multiple -f's (or make it work if you do so).
At 06:31 PM 1/3/2008 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
Jeff Hammel and myself were going over a problem with -f seemingly being ignored in easy_install, and it took us a while to realize that you have to do something like "easy_install -f 'url1 url2 ...'", and you can't do "easy_install -f url1 -f url2".
It's literally been years that I've been unaware of this, and confused by the results. I think easy_install should give an error if you provide multiple -f's (or make it work if you do so).
easy_install inherits this issue from the distutils -- i.e., it uses distutils argument parsing, which doesn't support this. It's a bit of a hack that it supports positional arguments at all. :(
In some alternate universe in which I have the funding (and therefore time) to actually work on setuptools 0.7 and "nest", this and many other issues would certainly be fixable.
Phillip J. Eby wrote:
In some alternate universe in which I have the funding (and therefore time) to actually work on setuptools 0.7 and "nest", this and many other issues would certainly be fixable.
Sometimes you just have to ask. The PSF is looking for worthy projects to fund, and setuptools has come up in conversation several times as a candidate important to the Python community overall. You'd have to write up a detailed proposal of what you can get accomplished for X dollars, but if you get between projects, you really ought to consider it.
-Jeff
On Jan 3, 2008, at 10:15 PM, Jeff Rush wrote:
Phillip J. Eby wrote:
In some alternate universe in which I have the funding (and therefore time) to actually work on setuptools 0.7 and "nest", this and many other issues would certainly be fixable.
Sometimes you just have to ask. The PSF is looking for worthy projects to fund, and setuptools has come up in conversation several times as a candidate important to the Python community overall. You'd have to write up a detailed proposal of what you can get accomplished for X dollars, but if you get between projects, you really ought to consider it.
+1
-Jeff
Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
Phillip J. Eby wrote:
At 06:31 PM 1/3/2008 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
Jeff Hammel and myself were going over a problem with -f seemingly being ignored in easy_install, and it took us a while to realize that you have to do something like "easy_install -f 'url1 url2 ...'", and you can't do "easy_install -f url1 -f url2".
It's literally been years that I've been unaware of this, and confused by the results. I think easy_install should give an error if you provide multiple -f's (or make it work if you do so).
easy_install inherits this issue from the distutils -- i.e., it uses distutils argument parsing, which doesn't support this. It's a bit of a hack that it supports positional arguments at all. :(
In some alternate universe in which I have the funding (and therefore time) to actually work on setuptools 0.7 and "nest", this and many other issues would certainly be fixable.
The attached patch gives a helpful error message if you give multiple -f options. I used sys.argv; I imagine there might be a more proper way to get the unparsed arguments, but I admit I didn't look too closely.
Obviously there are more correct solutions to this, but this addresses what I think is a substantial usability issue.
At 11:19 AM 1/4/2008 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
The attached patch gives a helpful error message if you give multiple -f options. I used sys.argv; I imagine there might be a more proper way to get the unparsed arguments, but I admit I didn't look too closely.
Unfortunately, that's not an acceptable approach. sys.argv may have zero to do with the arguments being parsed: consider zc.buildout, for example, let alone setuptools' internal uses of easy_install. These are far from the only programs that internally invoke easy_install while running from a different command line.
It might be better to fix distutils parsing so it detects duplicated options in general. If it can be done in a way that setuptools can monkeypatch the fix in, even better.
participants (4)
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Ian Bicking -
Jeff Rush -
Noah Gift -
Phillip J. Eby