I'm trying to extend the install, install_lib and install_scripts commands in distutils to support some extra options that, when specified, will let me select some intelligent defaults for attributes like install_lib and install_scripts.

I've figured out that I can extend the recognized options by subclassing the command classes along the following lines:

class install(distutils.command.install.install):
    boolean_options = _install.boolean_options + [ 'my-new-option' ]

    def initialize_options(self):
        _install.initialize_options(self)
        self.my_new_option = 0

    def finalize_options(self):
        _install.finalize_options(self)
        # manipulate attributes based on my_new_option

But here's the part that has me baffled: Since the point of "my_new_option" above is to select intelligent defaults for install_lib and install_scripts, I don't want to override the user who explicitly specifies "--install-{lib,scripts}=/some/dir" on the command line.

So... is there any way can I tell, in my finalize_options(), whether install_lib and install_scripts were set by the user or not?

I've picked my way through the code, but I don't see anything that seems to support this directly. Perhaps there's a way I could use parse_command_line() or _parse_command_opts() to figure this out? If not, I suppose I could always do it by hand, too...

I'd rather not code up one solution only to find that I just didn't grok that there was a better one staring me in the face. Any advice or pointers would be appreciated. Thanks!

    --SK