[Distutils] Anyone stuck with easy_install / has .pth file issues -- this is for you!

[P.J. Eby]

At 02:43 AM 5/4/2009 -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>Hi guys,
>     Just thought I'd might provide this script to fellow developers
>which fixes .pth files (easy-install.pth / .egg was the prime target
>-- see the comments for more details):
><http://yaneurabeya.livejournal.com/3929.html>.
>     Comments are more than welcome.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't do anything that "easy_install -mxN" 
doesn't, although it appears to also convert paths of this form:

    /foo/bar/baz/foo/bar/spam

into:

    ./baz./spam

if I'm reading the code correctly.  It also seems to have no 
protection against adding multiple versions of the same project to a 
.pth file, and to ignore development eggs, whether or not their 
directories still exist.

In contrast, easy_install already removes non-existent 
files/directories whenever it touches easy_install.pth, and if you 
gave it a command line globbing the same files as this tool (i.e., 
just "easy_install [list of eggs]"), you'd at least end up without 
any duplicates in the .pth file.

In short, AFAICT, you could replace the entire tool with a short note 
on how to accomplish the same things using easy_install, or by simply 
having it invoke easy_install internally.