[Tutor] Regarding installing a python package

[Chirag Shahani]

Thanks a lot for the response. I understand better now.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 7:28 AM, Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 at 10:47 Chirag Shahani <chirag.shahani at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Could any one please help me understand the following:
>>
>> Suppose I install a python package using python setup.py install provided
>> by the developer of a package. I need to track that changes in my file
>> system.. meaning what new directories and files got created? Also, what is
>> the concept of the egg file that gets created? What would be the location
>> of this egg file and how would it be named ****.egg? Also, the
>> ***.egg-info
>> directory?
>>
>
> It really depends. The setup.py script is really just an arbitrary program
> that can do anything and can create files in any location it chooses.
> Mostly setup.py files have a standard behaviour which is to install files
> in the site-packages folder for your Python installation (unless you
> provide command line options indicating an alternative location) and to
> install executables so that they will be available on PATH.
>
> So usually if I have a project called project_name then it will create a
> folder called project_name in the site-packages folder and then fill that
> folder with Python files and maybe some other data files. Really though it
> could do anything so if you need to know exactly what it's doing then
> you'll need to read the setup.py and understand distutils and setuptools.
>
> For example in my system the site-packages folder is called
>
>     /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
>
> For some reason Ubuntu calls it dist-packages but in most Python
> installations it is called site-packages. If I install ipython by running
> its setup.py then I will have an egg-info file called:
>
>     /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ipython-0.12.1.egg-info
>
> and also a folder called
>
>     /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IPython
>
> which contains all of the Python files for ipython. It also installs an
> executable file called ipython which is found at
>
>     /usr/bin/ipython
>
> The exact details of what files are installed and where they go can vary
> depending on what operating system and Python version you are using.
>
> --
> Oscar
>