zest.releaser need setuptools/distribute installed at system level when used in buildout

[benoit-intrw]

When running fullrelease into a buildout, I got a traceback as version.

After investigating, setup.py --version is called with sys.executable in a popen thus lost the sys.path context.

Most method are in zest/releaser/utils.py file.

The problem append when the computer have no version of setuptools installed at system level.

[reinout]

zest.releaser requires setuptools in its setup.py. My assumption is that you have setuptools installed globally (else, how did you install zest.releaser?) OR that you installed it into some virtualenv or buildout. In both cases, I'd expect setuptools to be available when using sys.executable.

But apparently I'm mistaken! It could very well be that it works just fine with virtualenv (which seems to be having a harder link to its own custom local python than buildout).

Do you have any idea how we could solve this?

[benoit-intrw]

The fullrelease entry point in buildout bin/ directory look like this (I’ve removed all other dependencies):

#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import sys
sys.path[0:0] = [
    '/home/xxxxx/.buildout/eggs/zest.releaser-3.37-py2.7.egg',
    '/home/xxxxx/.buildout/eggs/distribute-0.6.28-py2.7.egg',
    ]


import zest.releaser.fullrelease

if __name__ == '__main__':
    zest.releaser.fullrelease.main()

So with sys.executable you get the right python binary but lost the paths.

I agree with you that a pythonist machine without setuptools installed is quite rare :)
But we got the case.

I've not tried it but a solution could be to update PYTHONPATH environment variable with paths from sys.path. That's seems possible with http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.putenv but looks tricky.

[woutervh]

I'm also bitten by this

• barebones python without setuptools (deliberate)
• buildout pulls in its own setuptools to avoid conflicts between buildouts regarding setuptools-versions
• zest-releaser installed in a separate virtualenv of buildout

updating PYTHONPATH and appending the path to zestreleaser's setuptools-path seems OK

[mauritsvanrees]

A few years ago I gave this a shot in the maurits-add-syspath branch, basically changing the setup.py calls to: PYTHONPATH=...... python setup.py. I think it did not seem needed then, or it looked to dangerous/crazy.

Let's try it again, in basically the same way. See branch maurits-issue-24.

[mauritsvanrees]

BTW, a workaround for the user would be to create a virtualenv or buildout or whatever with a setuptools installed and add the directory containing that python executable to the path when calling fullrelease or release:

  PATH=/path/to/working/python/bin:$PATH fullrelease

If you make this a small bash script or an alias and give that the name fullrelease, all should work fine without you needing to remember to add that PATH.

[reinout]

I just released 3.51 with the fix by @mauritsvanrees . @woutervh, could you try that one?

(If it is still a problem, re-open the ticket :-) )

[woutervh]

Confirmed that the fix is working.