[Distutils] [Distribute] Distribute release preview - testers needed

[Tarek Ziadé]

Hello

I've uploaded a "preview" of the distribution in the repository
website. That's not the official release but I've added there so
people can help me debug it
before it gets out for real ;)

There's a script called "new_ez_setup.py" you can download and use to
install Distribute :
http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/downloads/new_ez_setup.py
It's not called ez_setup.py because there's a bug in bickbucket not
allowing me to override the old ez_setup.py file we've uploaded a
while ago (the old content
keeps showing up if the new file is called ez_setup.py, looks like a
cache issue)

Anyways, the process is :

$ wget http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/downloads/new_ez_setup.py
$ python new_ez_setup.py

What happens is :

- if the setuptools distribution is detected, it's replaced with a
fake 0.6c9 egg
- Distribute then installs its own egg containing its setuptools
package + pkg_resources.py module.

In theory all programs that use setuptools will continue to work
without any problem at this point,

In practice I need to do a lot of tests to see how it works when
there's other setuptools versions installed
with -m. There's some work to do too on zc.buildout side to see how it behaves.

I have started to write functional tests for this script but it's not
easy to test it under all environements.
but at this stage any help is already welcome !

my updated list of tasks :

- more tests
- working on zc.buildout side
- documenting the install process, what is does, and how to remove it,

In any case, there are good chances at this stage that some bugs will occur;
if you do find a bug, please add an issue in the tracker, with
"ez_setup" in the title
with all the details about your environment.

Thanks!

Cheers
Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org