[Distutils] install_requires setup.py install vs pip install

[Tim Golden]

On 07/03/2017 14:38, Leonardo Rochael Almeida wrote:
> Hi Tim,
>
> The reason setuptools can't process your package is because setuptools
> itself doesn't yet know how to install wheels[1] which pip knows how to
> install, and PyQT5 is only available as wheels on PyPI  (the files with
> `.whl` extension in the `simple` URL you linked).
>
> [1] https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/78
>
> The reason why setuptools can install "requests" or "simplejson" is that
> their pages contain `.tar.gz` files with the source distributions beside
> the `.whl` files.
>
> Incidentally, there are PyQT5 source distributions, and they're
> available in their own website[2].
>
> IMO they should be present in PyPI as well.
>
> (Though those archive names with `_gpl` in the middle might confuse
> setuptools, and they might prefer to deal with "Could not find suitable
> distribution" error message than some obscure compilation error arising
> from missing system packages).
>
> [2] https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/download5/

Thanks, Leo. That was a much simple explanation than I'd been 
considering! I didn't think to look at the output for requests etc. Now 
that I do, it's clearly building eggs from sdists.

Knowing this, I have ways forward. (This is actually about the mu editor 
which is aimed at teachers and other less techie people: 
https://github.com/mu-editor/mu)

Thanks again for your help

TJG