Python setup py develop vs install

Question

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

python setup py install is used to install  typically third party  packages that you re not going to develop modify debug yourself   For your own stuff  you want to first install your package and then be able to frequently edit the code without having to re-install the package every time     and that is exactly what python setup py develop does  it installs the package  typically just a source folder  in a way that allows you to conveniently edit your code after it   s installed to the  virtual  environment  and have the changes take effect immediately   Note that it is highly recommended to use pip install    install  and pip install -e    developer install  to install packages  as invoking setup py directly will do the wrong things for many dependencies  such as pull prereleases and incompatible package versions  or make the package hard to uninstall with pip

User · Answer

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

[python] Python setup.py develop vs install

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