[Distutils] Transitioning a Python Library on a Shared Network Drive to eggs/setuptools

[Alexander Michael]

In the past I've managed a shared library of Python packages by using
distutils to install them in secondary Library and Scripts directories on a
shared network drive. This worked fine, even in our multi-platform
environment. With advent of eggs, however, the secondary Library directory
must be a formal "Site Directory" and not just on sys.path. The extra delay
caused by the layer of network has caused simply getting --help for a simple
script to take almost three seconds when it previously only took a tenth of
a second. Some scripts that use many packages installed as eggs on the
network drive can take as many as 8 seconds just to display the help
message.

I would like to install architecture independent Python packages in a single
shared location so that everyone using that location is automatically
upgraded. The in-house packages are modified about five times a day on
average. I would like to take advantage of setuptools versioning (thus using
the pkg_resources mechanisms) so deprecated portions of the system can be
kept intact in some frozen state of development without having to include
the version number in the package name explicitly (i.e. mymod, mymod2, ..,
mymod42).

What is the recommended way of using eggs in such an environment?

Your thoughts and advice are appreciated,
Alex
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