pip install ./path/to/some.egg doesn't work

[glyph]

Partially I'm just curious, but I also think this should probably work: why does 'pip install [sdist]' work but not 'pip install [egg]'?

The ability to locally install binary eggs would be helpful when distributing software to end users for testing, before sticking it on PyPI.

(Sorry if this is a duplicate, none of the tickets I could find involving eggs seemed to cover this exactly.)

[kennethreitz]

Aren't eggs explicitly unsupported?

[glyph]

If that's true, then a useful error message would be nice.

[carljm]

Yes, pip explicitly does not support any type of binary distribution, whether installed locally or from PyPI. The reason is that support for installing them from PyPI is broken as designed, since there is no way to determine from the metadata available at PyPI whether a given binary distribution will actually work on your installation of Python. And if we supported installing them locally, it would just shift the obvious question to "why can I install this egg if I reference it locally, but not from PyPI".

I'd certainly accept a pull request for a better error message when this is attempted.

[glyph]

Thanks for the explanation. I am pretty sure I sort of knew that, in the back of my mind, but I was looking at the filename of the egg and it seemed to contain enough information; but I realize that's just an heuristic.

[technomalogical]

Is there a separate issue tracking binary .exe installation on Windows platforms? Ian has mentioned in the past that this is something pip would like to support. I'd be interested in hacking on a solution to the problem.

[carljm]

@technomalogical I don't believe there is an issue tracking that; feel free to file one and work on it!

[technomalogical]

Created #520

[stchris]

@carljm Which metadata is missing exactly? There has to be a way to fix this somehow, otherwise I guess easy_install couldn't do it either.

[carljm]

@stchris UCS2 vs UCS4 builds is one issue (though that will no longer apply on Python 3.3+ with PEP 393). There can also be issues with gcc/libc versions, versions of other compilers used to compile e.g. fortran extensions, etc. easy_install doesn't solve these issues, it just punts on them - easy_install can and will download and install a binary egg that doesn't actually work with your Python in some cases. (This is mostly an issue on Linux.)

If energy is to be put into this area, it would be more productive to put it into helping design a binary distribution format to be supported by distutils2/packaging. There is openness to this and some interested people, but nobody has taken the lead on pushing something through. Pip plans to eventually become a much thinner wrapper around d2/p, so it's unlikely that we'll decide to now suddenly start supporting a binary distribution format (eggs) that d2/p itself does not support.

[dstufft]

Closing this as Eggs are deprecated and pip supports Wheel now.

[dwt]

Out of interest, it seems to me that it would be really useful if I am still able to install legacy egg files for which I know that they already did work in the past on this machine.

To be fair, I'd really apreciate a default fail with an explanation telling me that this is unsafe and why. But I'd also really like a --force option to override this for cases where I know it's safe.

I appreciate that pip is helpfull (though the current error message really sucks), but it should not force me to not shoot myself in the foot if I want to. Because I really might know better.

Here's my argument: Why do you force me to switch all my infrastructure at once, instead of allowing to migrate to pip gradually? I would really like to use it (more) but am constantly held back in a lot of places because there are still eggs that I really want to install and can't.

My proposal: add a --i-know-what-i-m-doing-really-install-eggs option and make it really easy for people to migrate from easy_install (old and busted) to pip (new hotness).

[dwt]

@dstufft on your blog you asked people to talk to you about cases where python packaging failed you - so here I go.

[dstufft]

Quick question, are the eggs in question on PyPI or are they on your own machine?

[dwt]

My machine, and they where installed earlier on that machine, so I am fairly sure they will work again.

[dstufft]

Ok, so primary reason pip doesn't support Eggs is it has historically not supported eggs and we decided not to add code to pip that we would immediately deprecate in favor of Wheels. Can you just convert them to Wheels? The wheel library has a command that will convert an egg to a wheel if I recall.

[pfmoore]

The command is wheel convert <eggname>

[dwt]

That's great to know, I'll try that.

Could you guys pease put this in the error message that is shown when you try to install an egg with pip?

Would it be even possible to have a flag to pip that would make it auto convert egg files and then install the resulting wheel file?