Two options in setup.py develop
and install
are confusing me. According to this site, using develop
creates a special link to site-packages directory.
People have suggested that I use python setup.py install
for a fresh installation and python setup.py develop
after any changes have been made to the setup file.
Can anyone shed some light on the usage of these commands?
This question is related to
python
setuptools
From the documentation. The develop
will not install the package but it will create a .egg-link
in the deployment directory back to the project source code directory.
So it's like installing but instead of copying to the site-packages
it adds a symbolic link (the .egg-link
acts as a multiplatform symbolic link).
That way you can edit the source code and see the changes directly without having to reinstall every time that you make a little change. This is useful when you are the developer of that project hence the name develop
. If you are just installing someone else's package you should use install
Another thing that people may find useful when using the develop
method is the --user
option to install without sudo. Ex:
python setup.py develop --user
instead of
sudo python setup.py develop
Source: Stackoverflow.com