[Distutils] EasyInstall: installing from svn

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jun 3, 2005, at 1:56 PM, Ian Bicking wrote:

> Now I'm feeling confused about how installation from svn should work.
> Or more generally, how deployment and development work.
>
> Usually in development, I like to install libraries directly out of  
> svn
> (no distutil step).  Then I can fiddle with them if necessary, commit
> changes (or create diffs if I don't have commit access), etc.  This is
> all much easier to do when there's no distutil step.

In development, with svn libraries, I check out the source tree and  
create a .pth file <http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/02/06/ 
using-pth-files-for-python-development/>.  This .pth file does one of  
two things:

1. If the source requires distutils to build stuff (i.e. PyObjC),  
then I will point the .pth at the distutils build directory, so I can  
simply "python setup.py build" to update.
2. If the source does not (i.e. Twisted), I point the .pth at the  
right place in the source tree

 From an EasyInstall perspective, 2 is hard to figure out because  
there is no general way (without running distutils, anyway) to figure  
out where the right place is.  You could do it heuristically, but  
you'd probably be wrong :)

-bob