[Distutils] [Catalog-sig] Prototype setuptools-specific PyPI index.

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 06:26 PM 7/22/2007 +0200, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> > That's a secondary benefit. The main goal is to avoid the expense of
> > that page for packages that aren't in PyPI, as some packages I use aren't.
>
>I see. Shouldn't that be fixed by providing an option to setuptools
>that avoids going to the index for missing packages?

There's already such an option; --find-links or -f lets you specify 
URLs that should be checked before *any* PyPI access occurs.  If all 
dependencies can be met using those URLs without going to PyPI, and 
you haven't explicitly requested -U (--update), easy_install doesn't 
go to PyPI.

You can also specify such links in a setup script using 
setup(dependency_links=[...]), which bakes them into the .egg.  When 
searching for that egg's dependencies, easy_install will pick them up 
and use them.

So, it's actually possible to install a package and all its 
dependencies without using PyPI at all, if the package author(s) bake 
the URLs in.