[Distutils] default installs and plugins

[Ian Bicking]

I'm still finding it impossible to use multiple versions of a package 
unless none of them show up in a .pth file (i.e., none are available 
without requiring), I get a VersionConflict.  I think this may be 
because I iterate over entry points early on, then do a require later.

Conversely, if I don't have a default version installed, I don't see any 
entry points while iterating until the package is required.  I can kind 
of resolve this by adding a --require option to any command that uses 
plugins, but this feels like I'm going down the path of CLASSPATH-like 
command invocation.

I'm not even sure what the resolution would or can be, except that it 
means that I don't see any way to reasonably use versioning and plugins 
together.  This worries me, since I have lots of code that is both 
package and plugin, and if this is the situation then I'll have to move 
to non-root installs everywhere I want version isolation.  (Which I 
actually suspect I'll have to do anyway, but I was hoping that things 
would at least be usable without it).

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org