Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages
Project description
Installing and Using Distribute
Disclaimers
About the fork
Distribute is a fork of the Setuptools project.
Distribute is intended to replace Setuptools as the standard method for working with Python module distributions.
The fork has two goals:
Providing a backward compatible version to replace Setuptools and make all distributions that depend on Setuptools work as before, but with less bugs and behaviorial issues.
This work is done in the 0.6.x series
Starting with version 0.6.2, Distribute supports Python 3. Installing and using distribute for Python 3 code works exactly the same as for Python 2 code, but Distribute also helps you to support Python 2 and Python 3 from the same source code by letting you run 2to3 on the code as a part of the build process, by setting the keyword parameter use_2to3 to True. See http://packages.python.org/distribute for more information.
Refactoring the code, and releasing it in several distributions. This work is being done in the 0.7.x series but not yet released.
The roadmap is still evolving, and the page that is up-to-date is located at : http://packages.python.org/distribute/roadmap.
If you install Distribute and want to switch back for any reason to Setuptools, get to the Uninstallation instructions section.
More documentation
You can get more information in the Sphinx-based documentation, located at http://packages.python.org/distribute. This documentation includes the old Setuptools documentation that is slowly replaced, and brand new content.
About the installation process
The Distribute installer modifies your installation by de-activating an existing installation of Setuptools in a bootstrap process. This process has been tested in various installation schemes and contexts but in case of a bug during this process your Python installation might be left in a broken state. Since all modified files and directories are copied before the installation starts, you will be able to get back to a normal state by reading the instructions in the Uninstallation instructions section.
In any case, it is recommended to save you site-packages directory before you start the installation of Distribute.
Installation Instructions
Distribute is only released as a source distribution.
It can be installed using easy_install or pip, and can be done so with the source tarball, the eggs distribution, or by using the distribute_setup.py script provided online.
distribute_setup.py is the simplest and preferred way on all systems.
distribute_setup.py
Download distribute_setup.py and execute it, using the Python interpreter of your choice.
If your shell has the curl program you can do:
$ curl -O http://nightly.ziade.org/distribute_setup.py $ python distribute_setup.py
If you are under Python 3, use distribute_setup_3k.py:
$ curl -O http://nightly.ziade.org/distribute_setup_3k.py $ python distribute_setup_3k.py
Notice that both files are provided in the source release.
easy_install or pip
Run easy_install or pip:
$ easy_install Distribute $ pip install Distribute
Source installation
Download the source tarball, uncompress it, then run the install command:
$ curl -O http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.4.tar.gz $ tar -xzvf distribute-0.6.4.tar.gz $ cd distribute-0.6 $ python setup.py install
Uninstallation Instructions
Like other distutils-based distributions, Distribute doesn’t provide an uninstaller yet. It’s all done manually! We are all waiting for PEP 376 support in Python.
Distribute is installed in three steps:
it gets out of the way an existing installation of Setuptools
it installs a fake setuptools installation
it installs distribute
Distribute can be removed like this:
run easy_install -m Distribute. This will remove the Distribute reference from easy-install.pth. Otherwise, edit the file and remove it yourself.
remove the distribute*.egg file located in your site-packages directory
remove the setuptools.pth file located in you site-packages directory
remove the easy_install script located in you sys.prefix/bin directory
remove the setuptools*.egg directory located in your site-packages directory, if any.
If you want to get back to setuptools:
reinstall setuptools using its instruction.
Lastly:
remove the .OLD. directory located in your site-packages directory if any, once you have checked everything was working correctly again.
Quick help for developers
To use Distribute in your package, the recommended way is to ship distribute_setup.py alongside your setup.py script and call it at the very begining of setup.py like this:
from distribute_setup import use_setuptools use_setuptools()
Another way is to add Distribute in the install_requires option:
from setuptools import setup
setup(...
install_requires=['distribute']
)
Install FAQ
Why Distribute turn my Setuptools installation into an fake one?
Since Distribute is a fork, and since it provides the same package and modules, it fakes that the Setuptools installation is still present, so all the programs that where using Setuptools still work.
If it wasn’t doing it, a program that would try to install Setuptools would overwrite in turn Distribute.
How does Distribute interacts with virtualenv?
Everytime you create a virtualenv it will install setuptools, so you need to re-install Distribute in it right after. The Distribute project will not attempt to patch virtualenv so it uses it when globally installed. We will just wait for virtualenv to eventually switch to Distribute.
Once installed, your virtualenv will use Distribute transparently.
Although, if you have Setuptools installed in your system-wide Python, and if the virtualenv you are in was generated without the –no-site-packages option, the Distribute installation will stop.
You need in this case to build a virtualenv with the –no-site-packages option or to install Distribute globally.
How does Distribute interacts with zc.buildout?
You can use Distribute in your zc.buildout.
Although you have to run a specific bootstrap.py file that is available at http://nightly.ziade.org/bootstrap.py. The code is located at http://bitbucket.org/tarek/buildout-distribute.
Beware that if you use a shared eggs folder with buildout, you need to switch all buildouts that use it to distribute. This is due to the fact that the setuptools eggs located in the shared folder will be replaced by a fake one, alongside distribute.
Feedback and getting involved
Mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
Issue tracker: http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issues/
Code Repository: http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute
CHANGES
0.6.4
Added the generation of distribute_setup_3k.py during the release. This close http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/52.
Added an upload_docs command to easily upload project documentation to PyPI’s http://packages.python.org. This close http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/56.
Fixed a bootstrap bug on the use_setuptools() API.
0.6.3
setuptools
Fixed a bunch of calls to file() that caused crashes on Python 3.
bootstrapping
Fixed a bug in sorting that caused bootstrap to fail on Python 3.
0.6.2
setuptools
Added Python 3 support; see docs/python3.txt. This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue39.
Added option to run 2to3 automatically when installing on Python 3. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/31.
Fixed invalid usage of requirement.parse, that broke develop -d. This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue44.
Fixed script launcher for 64-bit Windows. This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue2.
KeyError when compiling extensions. This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue41.
bootstrapping
Fixed bootstrap not working on Windows. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/49.
Fixed 2.6 dependencies. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/50.
Make sure setuptools is patched when running through easy_install This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue40.
0.6.1
setuptools
package_index.urlopen now catches BadStatusLine and malformed url errors. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/16 and http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/18.
zip_ok is now False by default. This closes http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue33.
Fixed invalid URL error catching. http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue20.
Fixed invalid bootstraping with easy_install installation http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/40. Thanks to Florian Schulze for the help.
Removed buildout/bootstrap.py. A new repository will create a specific bootstrap.py script.
bootstrapping
The boostrap process leave setuptools alone if detected in the system and –root or –prefix is provided, but is not in the same location. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/10.
0.6
setuptools
Packages required at build time where not fully present at install time. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/12.
Protected against failures in tarfile extraction. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/10.
Made Jython api_tests.txt doctest compatible. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/7.
sandbox.py replaced builtin type file with builtin function open. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/6.
Immediately close all file handles. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/3.
Added compatibility with Subversion 1.6. This references http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/1.
pkg_resources
Avoid a call to /usr/bin/sw_vers on OSX and use the official platform API instead. Based on a patch from ronaldoussoren. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/5.
Fixed a SandboxViolation for mkdir that could occur in certain cases. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/13.
Allow to find_on_path on systems with tight permissions to fail gracefully. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/9.
Corrected inconsistency between documentation and code of add_entry. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/8.
Immediately close all file handles. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/3.
easy_install
Immediately close all file handles. This closes http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute/issue/3.
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