On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 1:59 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Warren Weckesser <warren.weckesser@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:

Hi all,

Apparently it is not well known that if you have a Python project
source tree (e.g., a numpy checkout), then the correct way to install
it is NOT to type

  python setup.py install   # bad and broken!

but rather to type

  pip install .

FWIW, I don't see any mention of this in the numpy docs, but I do see a lot of instructions involving `setup.py build` and `setup.py install`.  See, for example, INSTALL.txt.  Also see
    http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/user/install.html#building-from-source

So I guess it is not surprising that it is not well known.

Indeed, install docs are always hopelessly outdated. And we have too many of them. There's duplicate info in INSTALL.txt and http://scipy.org/scipylib/building/index.html for example. We should probably just empty out INSTALL.txt and simply put a link in it to the html docs.

I've created an issue with a long todo list and a bunch of links: https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/6599. Feel free to add stuff. Or to go fix something:)

Oh, and: looking at this thread there haven't been serious unanswered concerns (at least in my perception), so without more discussion I'd interpret the current status as "go ahead".

Hmm, after some more testing I'm going to have to bring up a few concerns myself:

1. ``pip install .`` still has a clear bug; it starts by copying everything (including .git/ !) to a tempdir with shutil, which is very slow. And the fix for that will go via ``setup.py sdist``, which is still slow.

2. ``pip install .`` silences build output, which may make sense for some usecases, but for numpy it just sits there for minutes with no output after printing "Running setup.py install for numpy". Users will think it hangs and Ctrl-C it. https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/2732

3. ``pip install .`` refuses to upgrade an already installed development version. For released versions that makes sense, but if I'm in a git tree then I don't want it to refuse because 1.11.0.dev0+githash1 compares equal to 1.11.0.dev0+githash2. Especially after waiting a few minutes, see (1).

I've sent a (incomplete) fix for the shutil thing (https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/3219) and will comment on some open issues on the pip tracker. But I'm thinking that for now we should go with some printed message first. Something like "please use ``pip install .`` if you want reliable uninstall behavior. See <somelink> for more details".

Pip has worked quite well for me in the past, but the above makes me thing it's not much of an improvement over use of setuptools.....