easy_install fails on missing README.rst

[klbostee]

Installing via easy_install fails:

$ env/bin/easy_install elasticsearch
Searching for elasticsearch
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/elasticsearch/
Best match: elasticsearch 1.0.0
Downloading https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/e/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-1.0.0.tar.gz#md5=ac087d3f7a704b2c45079e7e25b56b9f
Processing elasticsearch-1.0.0.tar.gz
Running elasticsearch-1.0.0/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-tIpohP/elasticsearch-1.0.0/egg-dist-tmp-N5Yo_u
error: /tmp/easy_install-tIpohP/elasticsearch-1.0.0/README.rst: No such file or directory

You could argue to simply use pip instead of course, but since tools like buildout use easy_install under the hood it's not always that easy to switch to pip in practice.

[klbostee]

The problem seems to be that easy_install ignores / excludes the rst files somehow. When installing via a proxypypi that contains an altered elasticsearch-py that refers to README instead of README.rst in setup.py (README was already there as a symlink to README.rst anyway), it does work for me:

$ env/bin/easy_install -i http://192.168.33.11:8000/simple elasticsearchSearching for elasticsearch
Reading http://192.168.33.11:8000/simple/elasticsearch/
Best match: elasticsearch 1.0.0
Downloading http://192.168.33.11:8000/package/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-1.0.0.tar.gz
Processing elasticsearch-1.0.0.tar.gz
Running elasticsearch-1.0.0/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-Jwdybf/elasticsearch-1.0.0/egg-dist-tmp-gCwn9m
#### DEBUG ####
dir: /tmp/easy_install-Jwdybf/elasticsearch-1.0.0
files: MANIFEST.in, LICENSE, tox.ini, docs, elasticsearch, README, temp, setup.cfg, CONTRIBUTING.md, AUTHORS, egg-dist-tmp-gCwn9m, setup.py, elasticsearch.egg-info, PKG-INFO
###############
warning: no files found matching 'Changelog.rst'
warning: no files found matching 'README.rst'
no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/_build'
no previously-included directories found matching 'test_elasticsearch'
warning: no previously-included files matching '__pycache__' found under directory '*'
warning: no previously-included files matching '*.py[co]' found under directory '*'
zip_safe flag not set; analyzing archive contents...
Adding elasticsearch 1.0.0 to easy-install.pth file

Installed /home/vagrant/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/elasticsearch-1.0.0-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for elasticsearch
Searching for urllib3>=1.5,<2.0
Reading http://192.168.33.11:8000/simple/urllib3/
Best match: urllib3 1.8
Downloading http://192.168.33.11:8000/package/urllib3/urllib3-1.8.tar.gz
Processing urllib3-1.8.tar.gz
Running urllib3-1.8/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-OsCwob/urllib3-1.8/egg-dist-tmp-Nt4H0W
zip_safe flag not set; analyzing archive contents...
dummyserver.server: module references __file__
Adding urllib3 1.8 to easy-install.pth file

Installed /home/vagrant/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages/urllib3-1.8-py2.7.egg
Finished processing dependencies for elasticsearch

I also added the code

print "#### DEBUG ####"
print "dir:", dirname(__file__)
print "files:", ", ".join(os.listdir(dirname(__file__)))
print "###############"

in setup.py to show that the rst files indeed go missing somehow (see results of these prints in the output above).

So long story short: I'm not exactly sure why it doesn't work with README.rst, but referring to README instead in setup.py fixes things. I'll submit a pull request shortly.

[llvtt]

Users of mongo-connector, which relies on elasticsearch-py, are often experiencing this issue when an older version of setuptools is installed. A workaround is to install a version >= 0.6.27 of setuptools (when setuptools started recognizing README.rst as a readme file). The issue is tracked here: yougov/mongo-connector#79. Perhaps this could be fixed by adding README.rst to a MANIFEST.in file before uploading to PyPI?
edit: I see that README.rst has been in MANIFEST.in from the very first.