[Distutils] Using easy_install without net access

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:02 PM 4/10/2006 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
>I'm trying to install a setuptools-based package (RuleDispatch) but
>there are no suitable binary eggs on the net (Python 2.5 on Windows).
>So I'm effectively building all of my own eggs and installing as if I
>have no net access [1]. According to
>http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall,
>
>"""If you can't use APS, or don't have internet access at all, you
>will need to first download the appropriate .egg file from the
>setuptools PyPI page using a computer with internet access. Place the
>egg in the same directory as ez_setup.py on the target computer before
>running it."""
>
>I tried this, but I can't get it to work - ez_setup.py still tries to
>go to CheeseShop. Do I need some command line flags not mentioned on
>the EasyInstall page? I've tried the most obvious ones, but to no
>avail.

Hm.  That seems odd.  It should just install itself.  Have you tried 
running "ez_setup.py --allow-hosts=None -f. setuptools"?


>Actually, I got somewhere, by building a setuptools egg, adding it to
>PYTHONPATH, then running ez_setup.py. That "installed" setuptools, but
>didn't move it anywhere - it's still in my temporary "Data" directory.
> >From there, easy_install -f . RuleDispatch seems to be getting
>somewhere (I now need to build PyProtocols, but that's OK). But still
>nothing's getting copied into site-packages.
>
>I'm clearly doing something wrong, but I have no idea what.

Me either.  I'm also not sure how to go about reproducing the problem.


>At the risk of going on about it, this is far messier than the
>traditional "python setup.py bdist_wininst" and run the installer...

That actually works now with setuptools-based packages, by the way.


>(BTW, what I ultimately want to do is to try out RuleDispatch on a
>machine which doesn't have net access. The rest is just annoying
>cruft. For now, I got this by building a wininst installer for
>setuptools, installing it, building wininst installers for pyprotocols
>and ruledispatch, uninstalling setuptools, and then using the wininst
>installers - as neither package uses setuptools at runtime...)

It's quite safe to do that; setuptools now fully supports bdist_wininst.