[Distutils] What's the difference between --index-url and --find-links?

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 1:38 AM, Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:
> I understand that --index-url is single valued, and --find-links is
> multi-valued. But what's the semantic difference between them? From my
> reading, it sounds like they both point to pages that contain links to eggs
> (or other distributions).

The index url contains an index page of packages, like
http://pypi.python.org/simple/
as defined here
http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#package-index-api

When setuptools or easy_install are used, they load the index and look
for packages
using the INDEX/PACKAGE_NAME/ base for the url.

find-links will let you add extra links for setuptools to look at, so
basically you
can add any place that contains a flat list of distributions.

Notice that there's a patch that has been proposed so setuptools can handle
several indexes.

>
> What I'm really trying to do is set up my own server, with my own collection
> of eggs. I want to configure easy_install (via a config file or command
> line) to only look at my collection of eggs, and never the Cheeseshop or
> anywhere else. Do I do this with just --index-url? Or with --find-links, and
> if so, how do I disable the index?
>

You could build your own index, using static html files, or use one
of the pypi compatible server applications out there, like EggBasket
or PloneSoftwareCenter.

to make sure you don't use anything else than your server (even if some packages
are trying to access other places with dependency links) you can use
the --allow-hosts
option to give a white list of urls patterns.


> Thanks. I searched the archives, but I couldn't find anything (these are
> very common search terms!).
>
> Eric.
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> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
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>



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Tarek Ziadé | Association AfPy | www.afpy.org
Blog FR | http://programmation-python.org
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