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

[Mark Sienkiewicz]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 04:48 PM 1/20/2009 -0700, zooko wrote:
>> So, this is just to let everyone know that any setuptools variant
>> (including a future release of PJE's setuptools) that respects the
>> PYTHONPATH will get at least two users!
>
> As I've said before, if somebody creates a patch that addresses the 
> use cases I pointed out, I'd be happy to accept it.

As I understand it, you require that a package installed by setuptools 
will be discovered before a package installed by distutils >in the same 
directory<. 

You do not require that a package installed by setuptools be discovered 
before a package that is earlier in sys.path.

In that case, the .egg file should go on sys.path immediately before the 
directory where it is stored.  This ensures that a setuptools .egg file 
will always be discovered before a distutils-installed package/module in 
the same directory, but it will not override packages/modules that occur 
earlier in sys.path.

Do you have any other requirements?

In 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-November/010534.html 
, I described a change to zooko's patch that implements this behaviour.

In 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2008-November/010540.html 
, I address concerns about case-insensitive filesystems. 

So, taken together, does my suggestion meet your criteria for an 
acceptable patch?

If so,

- I will assemble it into a patch.
- I will test it on platforms that I have access to, in ways that I know 
how to use setuptools.  (For the record, that is "python setup.py 
install --home=/dir"; I never tried the automatic downloads.)

If not,

- what further requirements do you have?

Mark S.