[Distutils] [issue89] easy_install silently drop symlinks when auto-extracting tarball source distributions

[Max Bowsher]

New submission from Max Bowsher <maxb at f2s.com>:

Trying to determine why pytz installed by easy_install was broken, I located the
following problem:

When setuptools extracts a tarball source dist to install it, it silently drops
any tar members which are neither files or directories. The problem is in
archive_util.py which specifically tests "if member.isfile() or
member.isdir():". I am uncertain why it would try to do this, but it is fatally
incorrect to do so when the software being unpacked includes symlinks as a
functional part of its sourcecode, as pytz does.

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messages: 444
nosy: maxb
priority: bug
status: unread
title: easy_install silently drop symlinks when auto-extracting tarball source distributions

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Setuptools tracker <setuptools at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue89>
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