[Distutils] easy-install question

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:40 PM 12/2/2007 -0600, Mike Driscoll wrote:
>I was told the other day that if I ran the easy-setup.py file on the
>PEAK website, it would basically download a broken version of
>distutils since the current version is automatically included with
>Python. This proved to be correct at my distutils commands quit
>functioning altogether when I did that.

I believe you are confused.  First, it's ez_setup.py, not 
easy-setup.py.  Second, it doesn't install distutils, broken or otherwise.


>So I was wondering if there is some way that easy-install or the
>distutils package could be set up to detect if there's a version
>already installed?

As far as I'm aware, this is the only place you can install the distutils from:

http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/distutils-sig/download/

And that page warns that if you're using Python 1.6 or later, you 
don't need to download the distutils at all.


>  This would allow the program to stop if the local
>copy is newer than the one being installed...or it could just warn the
>user that they are trying to install an older version and give them
>the option to abort or continue.

In order to stop the old distutils from wiping out new distutils, it 
would be necessary to modify the old distutils...  i.e., make them 
not the old distutils any more.  As far as I'm aware, there is nobody 
available to do this.