[Distutils] zc.buildout, recipe downloading dev eggs

[Jim Fulton]

On Oct 25, 2008, at 1:08 AM, Justin Ryan wrote:
...
> I apologize if this isn't the place to ask about buildout, but it is  
> listed as the support address in PyPI.

This is the right place.

...

> My concern is that, of course, buildout expects dev-eggs to be in  
> src/ when its' run,

No it doesn't.  buildout is based on setuptools, which is based on  
distutils and builds on any mechanisms they provide, which are very  
flexible. Use of src directories is a common and generally convenient  
convention.

> though dev products and other bits can come as dependencies of eggs  
> and via recipes.
>
> What I want is to be able to download dev eggs in a recipe, which is  
> applied before the eggs are sought.

I'm not sure what you're saying.

You can certainly create develop eggs in a recipe.  Buildout "prefers"  
develop eggs over non-develop eggs, so it will use a develop egg  
rather than a regular egg if both satisfy given requirements, even  
develop eggs with lower version numbers.

Note that this policy sometimes gets buildout into trouble since  
system installs often have the same type as develop eggs in  
setuptools.  I'm considering having buildout only prefer develop eggs  
found in it's develop-eggs directory.  I'm also, belatedly, planning  
to add an option to buildout to ignore site packages, which would also  
avoid this problem.

Jim

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation