[Distutils] Not repeating requirements for eggs

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 02:24 PM 7/28/2005 -0400, Kevin Dangoor wrote:
>setuptools lets you declare install_requires with a set of packages.
>This is handy and is nicer than the "old way".
>
>In one of my __init__.py files, I am redeclaring my requirements using
>pkg_resources.require, to ensure that they're all still available and
>to load them properly.

You can shortcut this by simply require('MyProjectName'), if you've 
declared the dependencies already.  No point in duplication.  You can also 
do require('MyProjectName[somefeature]') before some operation that needs 
stuff declared in extras_require.


>Does it make sense to run pkg_resources.require at runtime? (I think
>so...)

Not much, actually.  If you use easy_install to install a package and 
aren't using --multi-version or a custom install directory, it ensures that 
the package and all its dependencies are installed and active on 
sys.path.  So, no require()'s needed in that case.  Conversely, if you 
install --multi-version, then somebody will have to require() your package 
to get it on sys.path, in which case all your declared dependencies will be 
require()d too!

Finally, any scripts for eggs that use yours, or scripts from your egg, 
will do all of this stuff automatically if they were installed with 
easy_intall.

So, the answer is really that explicit require() really shouldn't be 
needed, if everything's an egg or you're installing to a "site" directory 
(one where Python reads .pth files).  If you have non-egg code involved in 
importing stuff and you're not using a "site" directory, then the *non-egg* 
code may need to use require().


>If so, it seems like a function could be added to pkg_resources
>that goes through this egg's required dependencies and does a
>require() on them. Something like
>pkg_resources.requireAll("MyProjectName").
>
>What do you think?

I think it's called pkg_resources.require("MyProjectName"), and what's 
more, you probably don't need to use it.  :)