[Distutils] patch: solving the two major things that people dislike about setuptools, part 1

[Ben Finney]

zooko <zooko at zooko.com> writes:

> 1.  Should the act of "easy_install foodistribution" cause subsequent
> "python -c 'import foomodule'" to get the new, easy-installed foo,
> instead of the pre-existing, distutils-installed foo which is in the
> system directory?

By the defined behaviour of PYTHONPATH and sys.path, the answer to
this would be “that depends on where ‘easy_install foodistribution’
installed the distribution”. If ‘easy_install’ wasn't explicitly
instructed to install somewhere other than the system directory, then
it should behave like distutils in this respect and *replace* the
existing instance in the system directory.

In other words, by default setuptools should be installing
distributions in the same place as distutils. If ‘easy_install’ has
been configured to put things in a different place, then at import
time the rules of PYTHONPATH and sys.path apply — and setuptools
should leave those alone so the user has the behaviour promised in the
documentation for PYTHONPATH and sys.path.

> PJE has already made clear (see references on the ticket that I
> filed or in my earlier mail) that he wants the answer to 1 to be
> "yes", because he is supporting a common use case in which a user
> doesn't know how to uninstall the old foo but wants to use
> easy_install to get a new foo.

If the argument is that this “common use case” involves ignoring,
overriding, or munging the existing PYTHONPATH or sys.path, that's a
bad argument. The way to change that behaviour is *not* to have magic
special behaviour in setuptools; it's to change the way Python works
so this use case is supported, if you can convince the Python team to
do so.

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. This smells
very much like a special case, and it's entirely possible to support
it with the existing PYTHONPATH and sys.path behaviour, AFAICT.

-- 
 \     “It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you |
  `\      know that you would lie if you were in his place.” —Henry L. |
_o__)                                                          Mencken |
Ben Finney