epicsarchiver fails to install in home directory

[kmpeters]

It doesn't seem to be possible to successfully install epicsarchiver in a user's home directory. I have attempted many of the alternate installs for the default version of python on RHEL6:

https://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/install/index.html

Most of the approaches (--user, --home, --prefix, --exec-prefix, --install-base) fail when the install process attempts to install pvarch to a system location:

  running install_data
  copying bin/pvarch -> /usr/bin
  error: /usr/bin/pvarch: Permission denied

Using --root to specify the alternate location allows most of the install to succeed, however, there are problems due to paths. If absolute paths are specified for the directories in config.py, these absolute paths get appended to the path passed to the --root flag. If relative paths are specified for the directories in config.py, some of the files get installed to the desired directories, but setup.py breaks (specifically the cmd == 'install' part).

[newville]

@kmpeters Hm, sorry for the trouble.. I guess I never tried that. Suggestions welcome!

[kmpeters]

The pvarch copy errors when most alternate-install flags are used is due to hard-coding sys.prefix + 'bin' to bin_dir on line 130 of setup.py. sys.prefix (and sys.exec_prefix) are both '/usr' on RHEL6 and they appear to be completely unaffected by the alternate-install flags.

I'm able to get most of the files installed in the right place with the "--root" flag because "/usr" is relative to the new root dir that I specify.

I know very little about pyhon's distutils module. It is far from obvious to me what variables availabel to setup.py are affected by passing flags like "--user" or "--home". A moderate amount of googling has not answered my questions about whether the setup.py script needs to handle these options explicitly or if there is a standard way of passing them to the setup() function. Examining the setup.py files from other python modules has left me even more confused.

Once I understand what the alt-install flags are doing (or what setup.py should do when it sees them), it should be easy for me to modify setup.py to install in alternate locations.

[kmpeters]

It looks like the alt-install flags should be handled automatically. The setup() function from distutils.core contains these lines:

    if 'script_name' not in attrs:
        attrs['script_name'] = os.path.basename(sys.argv[0])
    if 'script_args' not in attrs:
        attrs['script_args'] = sys.argv[1:]

Now I just need to figure out how to access the desired install directories after setup() is called.

[kmpeters]

I'm slowly working on a fix in my fork:

https://github.com/kmpeters/epicsarchiver

I'll submit a pull request when I think I've got it working.

[kmpeters]

I submitted a pull request for a change that allows the "pvarch" script to be installed to a directory other than sys.prefix. This eliminates the error that prevented many of the alternate installs from succeeding.

I'm giving up trying to make epicsarchiver install nicely in alternate-install scenarios. The lack of good python examples is frustrating. This is the approach I was considering:

1. Modify setup.py to install cgi files and template files in the EpicsArchiver module directory.
2. Move the manual copying and unzipping of files from setup.py to pvarch (executed when pv arch is called with something like "pvarch setup")
3. Modify pvarch to find the cgi files and templates using an approach like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4519127/setuptools-package-data-folder-location

I've been unsuccessful at accomplishing 1. with distutils.