[Distutils] [issue68] install local package with extras with easy_install

[P.J. Eby]

At 03:03 AM 4/23/2009 +0000, Chad wrote:
>I feel that the above is a bug. '.' should be treated as a path not a package
>name, since '.' is not a valid package name.

Actually, it is.


>   i haven't looked at the code yet,
>but it seems that a regular expression should be able to determine between a
>valid package name, an http address, and a path on disk.  it seems 
>like '.' was
>added as a special case, because other relative paths don't seem to 
>be supported:
>
>$ cd /path/to/mypackage
>$ easy_install ../mypackage[extraFeature]
>error: Not a URL, existing file, or requirement spec: 
>'../mypackage[extraFeature] '

As it says in the error message, arguments are checked for a URL, 
existing file, or a requirement spec -- and in that order.  URL-ness 
is checked by regex.  Filename-ness is checked by checking for the 
existence of the file or directory, not by parsing.  If the file 
doesn't exist, an attempt is made to parse it as a requirement 
spec.  '.[foo]' is neither a URL nor an existing file, but it *is* a 
valid requirement spec, for a package named '.'.

I don't know of any way to change any of this without changing the 
command-line API.  The recommended workaround for building a local 
package with extras is:

     easy_install . packagename[extras]

as this will first install the local package, then install the 
specified extras.