[Distutils] Random bits

[Michael Hudson]

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Greg Ward wrote:
> > I found the simple act of installing distutils somewhere other than
> > than the default to involve considerable head scratching and staring at
> > the USAGE file. I'd have thought this would be the commonest option passed
> > to install.
> 
> Yes, there definitely needs to be an easier grade from the "trivial"
> case to slightly customized to heavily customized cases.  This is mostly
> a documentation problem, I think.  (Although I have to actually *try*
> some of those slightly- and heavily-customized cases before I can be
> certain...)

Further mucking about shows that

python setup.py -v install_py --install-dir=/home/mwh21/src/python/

does what I want ... but

python setup.py -nv install --install-dir=/home/mwh21/src/python/

produces the dreaded

option --install-dir not recognized

While

python setup.py -nv install --install-site-lib=/home/mwh21/src/python/

works, and

python setup.py -nv install_py --install-site-lib=/home/mwh21/src/python/

doesn't ... I don't think that's helpful.

OTOH, I don't see how to make it better. I guess one would need to know
what people actually would be wanting this command to do on a regular
basis and make that easy. As a data point, I like to chuck everything
experimental in ~/src/python; I think currently for a mixed
extension/Python package I'd have to type something along the lines of

python setup.py install --install-site-platlib=~/src/python \
                        --install-site-lib=~/src/python

which is a bit unwieldy. Maybe I should make an alias for that...

Would it be reasonable to have an "interactive" mode, or am I just being
silly again?

Cheers,
Michael