[Distutils] Odd limitation in packaging/distutils2

[Éric Araujo]

Hi,

>> Can you define what you mean with “just work”?  Does it install things
>> into $checkout/Lib/site-packages?
> Seems to. Certainly does for my own packages.

Oh, nice.  The site-packages directory is not in .hgignore, so I think
this works by a happy accident.

>>> The reason I care is that installing packages into a dev build is
>>> really useful for testing packaging changes.

Agreed!  With virtual environments coming to the standard library, I
think the ability to install projects from an uninstalled Python will
become even more useful.  I will reopen the bug and try to fix sysconfig
on UNIX (#12141, #6087) to remove the limitation for all OSes.

>>> I'm not actually sure how to turn a dev build into an installed build
>>> on Windows...
>> http://docs.python.org/devguide/#quick-start : “On Windows, load the
>> project file PCbuild\pcbuild.sln in Visual Studio, select Debug, and
>> Build -> Build Solution;”
> 
> Sorry, I wasn't clear. That I know. But that produces what I assume
> counts as a "non-installed" build (with python.exe in the PCBuild
> directory).

It’s me, I confused building and installing.  *puts stupid hat on*

I don’t know if Visual Studio can install a project, or if you have to
turn it into a installer somehow first and then click it.  You could ask
on IRC or python-dev.

> Looking at is_python_build, it's just checking for the existence of
> Modules\Setup.*, so I suppose I could just rename or delete those
> files. It all seems a bit arbitrary, though.

I wouldn’t do that: It would trick Python into thinking it’s installed
without actually doing all the things that make it installed.

Regards