[Distutils] extension to pep 376: "develop" installation

[Tarek Ziadé]

On 9/13/12 9:26 AM, Chris McDonough wrote:
> I propose an extension to PEP 376 to support the development of projects
> such that:
Since PEP 376 is accepted, we'll need a new PEP for this kind of addition.

>
> - Installation tools should expect to need to cope with files
>    present in purelib named "foo.dist-link".  Each of these files
>    will be of the form "/path/containing/foo.dist-info\nreldir"
>    For example, the contents of such a file might be:
>
>        /home/chrism/projects/zope.interface
>        src

why do we need to place this file in purelib ?

In my understanding, if we add a file in the root of the developed 
project, that lists all
directories that should be included in the python path, we'd only need to
scan that file and add its content in develop.pth

IOW - the only impact in the purelib directory could be a single 
develop.pth file.

Now what if I am not sudoer ? how can I have the develop feature without 
being able to
write develop.pth in purelib ?

Could we find a way to have a per-user *and/or* per local project 
directory, that get
scan by Python at startup ?

Cheers
Tarek