distribute 0.6.2

Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages

Installing and Using Distribute

Table of Contents

• Installing and Using Distribute
  • Disclaimers
    • About the fork
    • More documentation
    • About the installation process
  • Installation Instructions
    • distribute_setup.py
    • easy_install or pip
    • Source installation
  • Uninstallation Instructions
  • Install FAQ
  • Feedback and getting involved
• CHANGES
  • 0.6.2
    • setuptools
    • bootstrapping
  • 0.6.1
    • setuptools
    • bootstrapping
  • 0.6
    • setuptools
    • pkg_resources
    • easy_install

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 docs/python3.txt 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.

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 in the archive in docs. 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, 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 wget program you can do:

$ wget http://nightly.ziade.org/distribute_setup.py
$ python distribute_setup.py

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:

$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xzvf distribute-0.6.1.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!

Distribute is installed in three steps:

1. it gets out of the way an existing installation of Setuptools
2. it installs a fake setuptools installation
3. 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.

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.

  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?

  Some work is being done on zc.buildout side to make its bootstrap work with Distribute. Until then, using Distribute in zc.buildout is a bit tricky because the bootstrap process of zc.buildout hardcodes the installation of Setuptools.

  The plan is to come with a custom bootstrap.py for zc.buildout for the 0.6.3 release, together with some small changes on zc.buildout side.

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

0.6.2

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.