[Distutils] Buildout not updating setuptools

[Jim Fulton]

On Jul 9, 2007, at 1:45 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> At 01:10 PM 7/9/2007 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>> IMO, they shouldn't have the same precedence.  IMO installations made
>> with the develop command should have the highest precedence. After
>> all, why would someone use the develop command if they didn't want to
>> see the effects of changes they're making in development.  Could we
>> can change the develop command to generate a different symbol, like
>> REALLY_DEVELOP_DIST and give it the highest precedence?  (Tempted to
>> wink, but not really kidding...) It appears that it doesn't actually
>> generate anything atm, but I think it should.
>
> I could have .egg-link files use a different precedence, but I  
> wouldn't make it the highest.  Develop eggs have the lowest  
> precedence for two reasons: one, easy_install prefers to use eggs  
> it can copy,

Why does this matter to users?

> and two, develop eggs have lower precedence to prevent you thinking  
> that your version requirements are correct when they aren't.
>
> That is, if you depend on 1.9.dev-r1201, and that picks up your  
> development version in place of an .egg file with the same version,  
> you won't be able to tell that your requirement is wrong.  This can  
> occur if you are working on an SVN checkout - your develop egg has  
> the same version as the built one, but you could have changed it.

That's a fair argument.  I think it is just as bad to be making  
changes to an svn checkout and having those changes have no effect.

I suppose that any time we select among two distributions with the  
same version based on precedence, we should issue a warning, at least  
when one of them is a develop dist.

> This was actually more of a happy coincidence than something I  
> planned ahead of time, but it does occur in practice.  :)

It made me very unhappy when I first started working with  
setuptools.  I use develop eggs a lot and I definately expect them to  
be used.

> Note that in any event, if we make platform-specific eggs have  
> higher precedence, then platform-specific built eggs will have to  
> take precedence over develop eggs, because "true" develop eggs are  
> never viewed as "platform-specific" (because they have no platform  
> name in their .egg-info directory name).

This argument sounds overly pedantic to me.

Jim

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