[cctbxbb] Installation with distutils?

[Luc Bourhis]

Hi Marcin,

I will indeed just wrap up our beloved configure and build steps within setup.py. My plan is to install the following hierarchy:

site-packages
|—— cctbx_distro
|   |—— cctbx_build
|   |—— cctbx_project
|—— cctbx.pth

where cctbx.pth would contain

cctbx_distro/cctbx_build/lib
cctbx_project/boost_adaptbx
cctbx_project/libtbx/pythonpath

Finally, I would add to site-packages/sitecustomize the following:

import os; os.environ[‘LIBTBX_BUILD’] = path/to/site-packages

I just need to refresh my mind about how to get at those paths!

> We considered adding setup.py here, but I thought it's not worth the
> effort and it won't work well anyway.
> I'd like to be proved wrong. My thinking was that
> - redoing everything without scons is a lot of effort for little
> benefit, and it would quickly get out-of-sync with the main build
> system if it's not actively maintained

Total agreement here.

> - wrapping cctbx/scons build system won't work well because distutils
> options won't map well to the scons options. And additional layer of
> indirection would be confusing. I mean distutils-like system that
> doesn't really work like distutils could be more frustrating than
> having to explicitly use cctbx build commands. But maybe I'm wrong
> here.

I do not plan to support the wealth of setuptools command-line options, like building in place, or creating those fancy development installation. But 99% of the time people are just interested in

% python setup.py install

so I think there is a case for providing that. That would be the first milestone. 

The second milestone would be to make sure the cctbx can then be installed with easy_install or pip, which may require a bit more support for the arcanes of setuptools. I don’t think it will be inordinately difficult.

Best wishes,

Luc
 
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