[Patch] - Enable optional use of setuptools

[ilias@…]

setuptools "develop" command is very useful for development

$ setup.py develop

The attached patch adds the setuptools commands (if setuptools is installed). You can verify it with:

$ python setup.py --help-commands

If setuptools is not installed, distutils is used as usual.

In both cases, the distutils functionality is not affected.

Thus the patch is non-critical.

Would be nice to have this for 0.10, to simlify development on trac.

[Matthew Good]

Try:

python -c "import setuptools; execfile('setup.py')" develop

Setuptools will be integrated properly in 0.11.

[ilias@…]

I don't need to try, I've patched my version already.

There is no need to make the setuptools transistion in one chunk.

Why don't you make developers/users live easier by simply adding this?

It does not change the behaviour in any way.

See ​this thread for further information.

[Matthew Good]

Replying to ilias@lazaridis.com:

Why don't you make developers/users live easier by simply adding this?

It does not change the behaviour in any way.

I've used the "develop" command with my Trac installation for a while, but I found that it caused problems running "install" when setuptools was active due to assumptions made in the Trac "setup.py" script breaking when installing into the ".egg" folder instead of directly in "site-packages". Using the latest setuptools this seems to work better, but I don't want to go and change the install script right before the release, since it may break for people using older versions of setuptools.

[ilias@…]

Although on my site it does not cause any problems, I've understood that I had wrong assumptions about setuptools neutrality to distutils commands (after talking with the developer).

[ilias@…]

possibly it's time to revise this, and to take it as a first step (or to close this ticket).

[Matthew Good]

Proper setuptools support may still be added for 0.11, but I've committed r4295 which only imports setuptools if the user is running the "develop" command. The "install" behavior is left using distutils since Trac's install process has not worked reliably with setuptools in my experience.

[ilias@…]

Excellent workaround. Thank's a lot!