[Distutils] Having a Python package install itself under a different name

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 5:40 AM, cool-RR <cool-rr at cool-rr.com> wrote:
> Hello all!
> I want to ask you a question regarding something I want to do with my app.
> The reason I'm asking here is because I understand that Distribute somehow
> installs itself as "setuptools". (I've never looked into the details of it.)

Your choice, but please do not do this. I really hate the behavior of
distribute in that regard, and it has already wasted several hours of
my time.

> And I want something similar, so maybe you can advise me how to do it.
> I'm developing a package called `garlicsim`. The package is intended for
> Python 2.X, but I am also offerring Python 3 support on a different fork
> called `garlicsim_py3`.(1)
> So both of these packages live side by side on PyPI, and Python 3 users
> install `garlicsim_py3`, and Python 2 users install `garlicsim`.
> The problem is: When third party modules want to use garlicsim, they should
> have one package name to refer to, not two. Sure, they can do something like
> this:
>     try:
>         import garlicsim
>     except ImportError:
>         import garlicsim_py3 as garlicsim
> But I would prefer not to make the developers of these modules do this.

That's so much better than having some magic there. There are other
solutions to your problem, but please, do not play with names like
that. That's really not necessary.

David