[PEAK] installation troubles / how to uninstall setup tools

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 05:04 PM 2/9/2006 -0500, Karl Pietrzak wrote:
>Hey everyone!
>
>So I guess there are two parts to this email.  One of them is to explain 
>how I
>couldn't get setuptools to work (1), and the other to ask for directions on
>uninstalling it (2).
>
>1. Overall, I would like to say that the documentation on installing and 
>using
>Python eggs is very poor.  I ended up Googling for "installing Python eggs"
>and I used http://funkload.nuxeo.org/INSTALL.html .

For future reference, the installation instructions are here:

http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall

This page was linked to by both of the top Google links, as well as by the 
funkload page, so I'm not sure why it's not at the top of the Google 
search.  Probably it doesn't have "installing Python eggs" used enough as a 
phrase; I'll try to remedy that.


># sudo python ez_setup.py
>Password:
>Downloading
>http://cheeseshop.python.org/packages/2.4/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg
>Processing setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg
>creating /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg
>Extracting setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg to /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages
>Installing easy_install script to /usr/bin
>
>Installed /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg
>
>Because this distribution was installed --multi-version or --install-dir,

It appears there is something unusual about your setup.  Normally, Python 
expects its libraries to be in $PREFIX/lib/python2.4/site-packages, and 
there isn't any way for setuptools to tell that your particular 
installation has an unusual directory layout, or at least not any obvious 
way that I know of at present.  As a result, setuptools has failed to 
install itself here in a way that is importable.  I think I know how to fix 
this problem, assuming that the distutils on your machine know that this is 
the correct directory.

In the meantime, however, if you are willing to experiment, I would ask you 
to try this:

     ez_setup.py --site-dirs=/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages setuptools

If this works (i.e, you can then run Python and import pkg_resources), then 
all I need to do to fix setuptools is to get it to figure out that the 
lib64 site-packages is valid automatically.  We can also tweak your 
configuration so that you don't have to manually specify --site-dirs every 
time you use easy_install before I get setuptools fixed.


>2. How do I uninstall the setuptools now installed on my machine?

Based on the output you showed, these commands should be sufficient:

   rm -rf /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6a9-py2.4.egg
   rm /usr/bin/easy_install

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but if you're willing to spend a few 
minutes trying the --site-dirs option I hope there's a chance to salvage 
you as a "customer".  :)