[egenix-users] eGenix PyPI-like package index available

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Hello eGenix Users,

in the past few months we've experimented with our own PyPI-style
egg package index. This was needed since we wanted to provide
downloadable egg files, but needed to ship both UCS2 and UCS4
builds of the eggs. Since setuptools and easy_install don't
differentiate between those two Python build versions, we couldn't
use PyPI itself for hosting the files and decided to build a
simple, but effective index ourselves.

Index
-----

Here's the URL for the UCS2 index, which you can use for Windows
eggs as well as self compiled Python versions on Unix:

    http://downloads.egenix.com/python/index/ucs2/

and this is the one for UCS4 builds, which are commonly used for
eggs needed by Linux-distribution Python versions:

    http://downloads.egenix.com/python/index/ucs4/

Usage
-----

Usage is easy, e.g.

easy_install \
    -i http://downloads.egenix.com/python/index/ucs2/ \
    egenix-mx-base

will install the latest egenix-mx-base distribution.

If you want to install a specific version, you can also point
easy_install to the version directory:

easy_install \
    -i http://downloads.egenix.com/python/index/ucs2/egenix-mx-base/3.1.3/ \
    egenix-mx-base

or you use the version selection mechanism from setuptools for this:

easy_install \
    -i http://downloads.egenix.com/python/index/ucs2/ \
    "egenix-mx-base == 3.1.3"

Buildout
--------

The same can be done from zc.buildout. You only need to add the
index URL to the "find-links" entry of the [buildout] section and
the corresponding package name to the "eggs" entry.

To pin down specific versions of a package, you can add
a "versions=versions" entry to the [buildout] section and
a new section

"""
[versions]
egenix-mx-base == 3.1.3
"""

to the buildout.cfg file.

Quirks
------

The easy_install method only works reliably on Linux and Windows,
due to the way it searches for the right egg files. On Macs and
FreeBSD, the platform string is not unified, so easy_install
will likely not find the right egg for your platform.

In such a case, you will have to download the egg archive
and then point easy_install directly to the egg file. For
buildout, you will have to rename the file to whatever
platform string easy_install uses to search for the right
egg.

Plans
-----

We currently have the egenix-mx-base packages and egenix-mxodbc-zopeda
up on the index, but will extend this to more packages as we release
new versions.

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Source  (#1, Apr 23 2010)
>>> Python/Zope Consulting and Support ...        http://www.egenix.com/
>>> mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ...             http://zope.egenix.com/
>>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ...        http://python.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________

::: Try our new mxODBC.Connect Python Database Interface for free ! ::::


   eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH  Pastor-Loeh-Str.48
    D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg
           Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611
               http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/