[Numpy-discussion] Egg support

[Robert Kern]

Robert Crida wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I am interested in building numpy using the bdist_egg option. 
> Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be quite working properly. When I 
> tried it with 0.9.8 then it successfully build an egg file but this had 
> problems when I tried using it. I thought I would look at 1.0b1 and 
> discovered that it would not build the egg at all. The problem is in 
> numpy.distutils.core where it checks if "setuptools" in sys.modules. In 
> my case, I have setuptools installed using ez_setup.py and hence it 
> appears to be qualified by a version number and hence doesn't pass the 
> test.

No, that's not the issue. You simply need to make sure that setuptools is 
imported explicitly. Once it has been imported, sys.modules['setuptools'] will 
exist and will be used. That's what the setupegg.py file does for you. There are 
other, standard ways, too.

   $ python -c "import setuptools; execfile('setup.py')" build install

Using easy_install to install numpy should work, too, since it imports 
setuptools before running the setup.py script.

> I tried modifying the code to look more like an earlier option, ie 
> test by trying to import setuptools within a try block and that worked 
> fine. I then had a look at the trunk and discovered that the test was 
> still being performed the same way, ie if "setuptools" in sys.modules, 
> however there is now a setupegg.py file in the root. Now it seems that 
> this is a bit of an odd workaround and I was wondering if there was any 
> compelling reason for not reverting to the mechanism for testing 
> availability of setuptools using a try block?

Yes. Some people have setuptools installed but do not want to install numpy as 
an egg. This gives us the maximum flexibility while still making sure that

   $ easy_install numpy

works.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco