[Distutils] Optimizing easy-install upgrade

[Jim Fulton]

On Jun 21, 2006, at 6:27 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 05:37 PM 6/21/2006 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>
>> Suppose I have the directory:
>>
>>    /home/jim/tmp/dist:
>>    used 92 available 41345796
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   671 Jun 19 17:43 demoneeded-1.0-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   672 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.1-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.2-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.3-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.4-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.5-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.6-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.7-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.8-py2.4.egg
>>    -rw-rw-r--  1 jim jim   673 Jun 19 17:46 demoneeded-1.9-py2.4.egg
>>
>> and then run easy install telling it to install something I  
>> already have:
>>
>>    [jim at ds9 ~]$ /usr/local/python/2.4/bin/easy_install -d tmp/dist  
>> -mxU demoneeded==1.1
>
> The -U option means "always search PyPI".
>
>> I have some scripts that invoke easy_setup and I'd like to try to
>> do some of this logic myself.  Given a requirement, I'd like to
>> get the specifiers and decide myself whether to invoke easy_install.
>> I have 2 problems:
>>
>> - I don't want to parse the requirement myself, but, rather,
>>    use Requirement.parse.  If I use Requirement.parse, I can use
>>    the specs attribute to get the specifiers, however, this
>>    attribute isn't documented.  Should I assume that it is
>>    private? Or is it safe to use.
>
> Why do that when you can just ask the Requirement whether it  
> matches a particular version?  The __contains__ method of  
> Requirement objects accepts a version string, distribution object,  
> or parsed version number you can use.
>
> (For that matter, you can query an Environment or WorkingSet for  
> the distributions whose versions you want to check.)

Here's my use case: I want to get the most recent distribution that  
satisfies my
requirement.  If my requirement sets an upper bound, and I already  
have the distribution
at the upper bound, then I don't want to have to search the index.

For us, it will be very common to specify specific distribution  
versions.  I don't
want to have to search an index if I already have the specific version.

I understand that the -U option isn't designed to meet this use  
case.  That's
fine.  I want to be able to introspect a requirement  to determine  
wether
it set an upper bound.  __contains__ doesn't let me do that.  With  
the rules
that you've explained for evaluating a set of specifiers, I can do  
that if
I can get at the specifiers.  What I want is either a public API for  
getting the
specifiers, or an API that lets me retrieve the upper bound, if there  
is one.
(Obviously, it could return None if no upper bound exists.)

Jim

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