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Indeed, install docs are always hopelessly outdated.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:)