[IPython-dev] iPython binary wheels for OS-X

[Aaron Meurer]

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 December 2013 15:55, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal
> <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>>> What's the reason you can't pip install readline? Is it because pip
>>> insists on compiling it?
>>
>> No--it needs to be compiled either way--but I _think_ the issue is that pip
>> and easy_install put packages on sys.path differently. The pop way puts it
>> after the existing readline.
>
> easy_install hacks sys.path to put installed packages before the
> standard library. That was controversial behaviour at the time it was
> implemented, IIRC - Guido specifically did not want to have user
> installed packages able to overwrite stdlib behaviour. I don't know if
> that position has changed, it's so rarely relevant that I don't think
> people care that much (they tend to care more about the nasty pth file
> hacks just for their own sake, rather than for the implications :-))

Does Python 3.3 help the situation? They refactored the import system
quite a bit there.

Aaron Meurer

>
> Pip has never implemented path hacks like this, and uses
> --single-version-externally-managed which avoids a lot of setuptools'
> controversial behaviour.
>
> So, by policy, it's hard to override stdlib modules - even when they
> don't work right (which appears to be the issue with readline on OSX,
> if I understand the comments in this thread properly). IMO, we'd be a
> lot better off readline was split out of the stdlib so that things
> like improved OSX support and pyreadline for Windows could be added.
> But I doubt that will ever happen :-(
>
> Paul.
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