[PEAK] Problem installng ez_setup

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 08:14 PM 11/29/2005 -0800, Jon Rosen wrote:
>We are using Debian.  Python2.4 is installed in /usr/bin (and is in the 
>path).  Site-packages is installed in /usr/lib/python2.4.  I placed 
>ez_setup.py in the site-packages directory.
>
>When I execute it uisng "python2.4 ez_setup.py", I get the following output:
>
>jon at qasup1:/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages$ python2.4 ez_setup.py
>Downloading 
>http://cheeseshop.python.org/packages/2.4/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6a8-py2.4.egg
>error: invalid Python installation: unable to open 
>/usr/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)
>jon at qasup1:/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages$
>
>As reported, there is no config directory under python2.4.  I am not sure 
>if this is missing for some reason or there is a problem with the 
>ez_setup.py I have.  I couldn't find any reference to a Makefile or even a 
>"make" in the setup script.
>
>I am a relative newbie and my sysadmin set up python2.4 for me on my 
>server.  As I noted above, we are using Debian and he said he installed 
>python from the preconfigured packages that come with Debian.

You need the python-devel (dev?) package, which includes all the 
otherwise-missing parts of Python.  Without it, your Python installation is 
unable to build distutils-based packages.

In addition to this, it's strongly recommended that you create a sitewide 
distutils.cfg (in /usr/lib/python2.4/distutils/) containing the following:

    [install]
    prefix = /usr/local

    [easy_install]
    site_dirs = /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages

This will tell the distutils and easy_install to install things in 
/usr/local/lib instead of /usr/lib, so as to avoid conflict with 
Debian-installed packages.