[Python-Dev] how to easily consume just the parts of eggs that are good for you

[zooko]

Folks:

Here is a simple proposal:  make the standard Python "import"  
mechanism notice eggs on the PYTHONPATH and insert them (into the  
*same* location) on the sys.path.

This eliminates the #1 problem with eggs -- that they don't easily  
work when installing them into places other than your site-packages  
and that if you allow any of them to be installed on your system then  
they take precedence over your non-egg packages even you explicitly  
put those other packages earlier in your PYTHONPATH.  (That latter  
behavior is very disagreeable to more than a few prorgammers.)

This also preserves most of the value of eggs for many use cases.

This is backward-compatible with most current use cases that rely on  
eggs.

This is very likely forward-compatible with new schemes that are  
currently being cooked up and will be deployed in the future.

Regards,

Zooko