Cannot install nose without superuser privileges

[ngoldbaum]

Currently when I try to install nose with pip, I'm getting the following error:

$ pip install -U nose
Collecting nose
  Using cached nose-1.3.7-py2-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: nose
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 317, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 742, in install
    **kwargs
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 831, in install
    self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root, prefix=prefix)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 1032, in move_wheel_files
    isolated=self.isolated,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 378, in move_wheel_files
    clobber(source, dest, False, fixer=fixer, filter=filter)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 317, in clobber
    ensure_dir(destdir)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 83, in ensure_dir
    os.makedirs(path)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.12/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 150, in makedirs
    makedirs(head, mode)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.12/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 157, in makedirs
    mkdir(name, mode)
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/local/man'

I'm unsure why pip is trying to write to /usr/local here. After asking on pypi, someone suggested it was due to this line in nose's setup.py file: https://github.com/nose-devs/nose/blob/master/setup.py#L109

[ngoldbaum]

FWIW, if I remove line 109 from nose's setup.py file, I'm able to successfully install.

[sparr]

Just encountered this problem myself, while installing something depending on nose. Took a while to narrow the problem down and find this issue.

Creating /usr/local/man myself resolves the problem, and the installer doesn't even create a file there. Not sure what's going wrong here that produces this behavior.

[sparr]

A fix for Homebrew/install#109 will resolve this problem.

[sparr]

Homebrew/install#109 is closed and won't be addressed.

resolving this problem will require either convincing the nose devs to put their man page in /usr/local/share/man or convincing the homebrew-core python formula devs to modify the behavior of pip to recognize attempts to write to /usr/local/man should end up in /usr/local/share/man

[sparr]

additional reports of this problem, all caused by nose:

jupyter-incubator/sparkmagic#380
http://qiita.com/hshimo/items/392a981cd1ac8fcd268d
http://wordpress.ideacompo.com/?p=7900

[ngoldbaum]

I would suggest that nose not try to install the man page at all. If someone needs to package the man page for e.g. debian, they can do that manually.