[Distutils] Easy Install Documentation Error

[Chris Lambacher]

Hi,

I was having a bit of trouble installing python module packages on Gentoo
after following the "Administrator Installation" section of the documentation.

I kept getting packages installed to /var/tmp/homedir/python2.4/ or something
like that.  I couldn't figure out what was going on until I came accross a
gentoo bug that someone filed and then closed citing installation of
setuptools as the culprit.  Thats when I realised that I added the following
to my distutils.cfg:
[install]
install_lib = ~/lib/python2.3

# This next line is optional but often quite useful; it directs EasyInstall
# and the distutils to install scripts in the user's "bin" directory.  For
# Mac OS X framework Python builds, you should use /usr/local/bin instead,
# because neither ~/bin nor the default script installation location are on
# the system PATH.
#
install_scripts = ~/bin

Which would cause all distutils based installations to do that.

Further up in the documenation it talks about using the [easy_install] section
of distutils.cfg to set some preferences.  I changed the above to:
[easy_install]
install_dir = ~/lib/python2.3
scripts_dir = ~/bin


I would recommend changing the documenation to avoid confusion since most
people probably want to leave their old distutils operation alone and add
these settings for easy_install.

-Chris