[Distutils] Automatically going for a pre-req dev

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 05:08 PM 1/6/2006 -0800, Ben Bangert wrote:
>ns# easy_install -U python-openid
>Searching for python-openid
>Reading http://www.python.org/pypi/python-openid/
>Reading http://www.openidenabled.com/openid/libraries/python/
>Reading http://www.openidenabled.com/openid/libraries/python/ 
>downloads/python-openid-1-0-3-tar.gz/download
>No local packages or download links found for python-openid
>error: Could not find distribution for Requirement.parse('python- openid')
>
>Apparently it doesn't like Plone download links?

Yep.  Not very RESTful, that.  :) The second problem is that the filename 
isn't a valid distutils source distro filename for a '1.0.3' version; the 
name should be python-openid-1.0.3.tar.gz instead.

You can work around both of these issues by adding 
'#egg=python-openid-1.0.3' to the end of the download URL on your PyPI 
page, which explicitly tells easy_install how to interpret the link.

Note, however, that #egg link fragments are intended mainly for Subversion 
checkouts, and easy_install will therefore give a higher match precedence 
to any binary links that match, *including* any .tar.gz or other archive 
links that don't use #egg.  (Unless the user requests an --editable 
checkout, in which case #egg links and source distributions have the 
highest priority.)

Anyway, it's probably better in the long run to simply make files available 
with the standard distutils filename, and use #egg in this case only as a 
workaround.