[Distutils] Problem upgrading docutils with setuptools

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 25, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Matthias Urlichs wrote:

> Bob Ippolito:
>> Would setuptools notice the conflict between the roman module in both
>> eggs?
>>
> There is no conflict -- your module would be called "whatever.roman".

No, there is.  Including roman was suggested as a way to satisfy a  
docutils dependency.  Docutils expects roman to be a top-level  
module, and it will install it -- but only if roman can't be imported  
at the time setup.py is run.

This behavior is problematic for packaging software (eggs and any  
other bdist command).  Basically, if the person packaging docutils  
happens to have docutils installed at the time of packaging, the  
resultant package will be missing a required component.  In the case  
of eggs, the detected roman module will disappear as soon as the new  
egg is activated, so you have to easy_install it twice (or  
equivalent) in order to get something that works.

-bob