At 04:18 PM 5/9/2009 +0200, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
.pth files are why I can't easily use GNU stow with easy_install. If installing a Python package involved writing new files into the filesystem, but did not require reading, updating, and re-writing any extant files such as .pth files, then GNU stow would Just Work with easy_install the way it Just Works with most things.
Please understand that this is the fault of easy_install, not of .pth files. There is no technical need for easy_install to rewrite .pth files on installation. It could just as well have created new .pth files, rather than modifying existing ones.
If you always use --single-version-externally-managed with easy_install, it will stop editing .pth files on installation.
It's --multi-version (-m) that does that. --single-version-externally-managed is a "setup.py install" option. Both have the effect of not editing .pth files, but they do so in different ways. The "setup.py install" option causes it to install in a distutils-compatible layout, whereas --multi-version simply drops .egg files or directories in the target location and leaves it to the user (or the generated script wrappers) to add them to sys.path.