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From: Scott Talbert <swt@techie.net>
Newsgroups: linux.debian.maint.python
Subject: Re: Removal of easy_install
Date: Tue, 08 May 2018 02:50:02 +0200
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On Tue, 8 May 2018, Ben Finney wrote:

>> The source package in question is wxpython4.0. The reason I use
>> easy_install is for installing the python2 version of the module as an
>> egg.
>
> Okay, so from that I understand that the Debian package is not invoking
> ‘easy_install’ to fetch files from the network.
>
>> From what I remember, it is surprisingly difficult to convince
> ‘easy_install’ that it should never access the network, even when you
> think you're only performing local operations. Probably it's best to
> test this in a virtual machine isolated from the network, to be sure it
> succeeds.

Correct - using easy_install to install the egg doesn't fetch files from 
the network.  I haven't tried this in a virtual machine, but it definitely 
works fine on the Fedora builders which are pretty well hardened to have 
no network access.

>> The reason I do this is because wxpython3.0 occupies the 'namespace'
>> for the wx module for python2. In other words, both wxpython3.0 and
>> wxpython4.0 have a 'wx' module for python2. In order to avoid a
>> conflict, I install the wxpython4.0 version as an egg.
>
> How does that avoid the conflict — that is, what is the effect of
> installing the egg such that a namespace conflict is avoided?
>
> I ask because it is likely that today's Python has a better way of
> achieving the effect you're wanting, so that ‘easy_install’ is not
> needed.

Installing the egg means that all the wxpython4.0 files are installed 
under:
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/wxPython-4.0.1-py2.7-linux-amd64.egg

Thus, any program or user who does an 'import wx' will get the wxpython3.0 
module and if instead the wxpython4.0 module is desired, the user must 
manually insert the above path into sys.path or PYTHONPATH.

Scott
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