Python Install Magic Package
Python packaging is complicated and often clashes with distro package managers.
To make things worse, now there's pimp. It uses pip and `distutils
http://docs.python.org/2/library/distutils.html`_ to download packages from
PyPI and build RPMs out of them, which it installs using the system's package
management.
Requirements and Installation
Every self-respecting pimp needs a Fedora
(purple color recommended), no other distributions have even been tested. To
install pimp, first install pip and virtualenv using yum:
yum install python-pip virtualenv
After that, we'll bootstrap pimp with itself:
TMPDIR=`mktemp -d` && virtualenv --distribute $TMPDIR && \ $TMPDIR/bin/pip install pimp -U &&\ $TMPDIR/bin/pimp --python /usr/bin/python install pimp -U &&\ rm -rf $TMPDIR
This will create temporary directory and a new virtual environment in it,
install pimp from PyPI, use pimp to package itself, install that
package and remove the temporary directory.
The good parts
/usr/local aside, there shouldn't be any files in your /usr directory
that aren't managed by the package manager (and even then I'm not even fond of
installing stuff into /usr/local). When you use pip to install packages
system-wide, they end up /usr, without the local-part.
pimp tries to remedy this situation, by giving you a way to install
packages through auto-generated rpm-packages that can be uninstalled cleanly.
The bad parts
As of spring 2013, Python packaging is a complete mess (just google distutils,
distutils2, setuptools, distlib, packaging, pip, easy_install or any other
crazy piece of software messing with packages). Since pimp largely relies
on some of these, there are a few issues described below. The general message
here is though, only use pimp for the one thing it is intended: Installing
the occasional script system-wide. [1]_
Only use PyPI-packages
pip does not support local filesystem packages or checkouts using
git+git://-urls in the same way it does PyPI downloads. This makes it hard
to support these, so for now[2]_, only PyPI packages are
supported.
RPM-names
For reasons unknown, distutils' bdist_rpm command allows a lot of
customization - but not the RPM name. Your best is hoping that you do not run
into a naming conflict with another package. On the bright side, you'll be
warned by rpm beforehand and nothing should break.
Useful things
pimp sets the release-version of every package it creates to pimp. This
means that you can list all packages installed by it using:
rpm -qa release="pimp"
Uninstalling all these is just as simple:
sudo rpm -ve `rpm -qa release="pimp"`
