Due to a recent site overhaul by sourceforge certain files linked to from pypi won't install. For example, in trying to install all the dependencies for the subway web framework, I got this kind of error:
<snip> . . . Searching for CherryPy>=2.1.0-rc1 Reading http://www.python.org/pypi/CherryPy/ Reading http://www.cherrypy.org Reading http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=56099 Best match: CherryPy 2.1.0-rc2 Downloading http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cherrypy/CherryPy-2.1.0-rc2.tar.g z?download error: Unexpected HTML page found at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cherrypy /CherryPy-2.1.0-rc2.tar.gz?download </snip> Unless I am mistaken, this seems like a problem due to a dependency on screen scraping to get the location of the file. If this is the case, IMHO it is too fragile. What ideas do people out there have for making the installation of python module more reliable? Just to get the ball rolling, here are two suggestions: [1] If setuptools encounters an error in retrieving a dependency from its registered location (off python.org), it falls back to a canonical URL that serves it from pypi, an email is then dispatched to uploader / module maintainer, etc... So I when I register the location of my python module on pypi, I also upload a copy to pypi. This can serve as a permanent repository for all python modules and versions, but because it is only used as a fallback server, bandwidth use and therefore cost will be manageable. [2] Create an alia for easy_install.py : egg.py This not really a reliability tweek, its just a memory tweek. The advantage of this is to save the installer a few keystrokes, and to relate the installation command to that which is installed. Furthermore, I won't be jealous of ruby's little "gem" command anymore. (-; AK -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list