[Distutils] How to best install pkg_resources?

[P.J. Eby]

At 03:33 PM 12/14/2010 +0100, Arve Knudsen wrote:
>I found out how to solve it; I need to call 
>setuptools.command.install.install.do_egg_install, since 
>setuptools.command.install.install.run will emulate the standard 
>distutils behaviour unless it's run directly from setup.py :( This 
>behaviour was hardly obvious I have to say :(

Worse news: unless you emulate that same behavior in *your* install 
class, you will break bdist_rpm, bdist_wininst, bdist_dumb, etc.

In other words, all that non-obvious behavior is there for backward 
compatibility with other distutils commands that invoke "install" as 
a subcommand.  If you test your now-"fixed" setup.py with them, you 
will find that your project does terribly broken things.

(i.e., try "bdist_rpm" or "bdist_wininst" on a simple setup and your 
more complex project, and compare the results.)