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| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/dist/dist.tex | 21 |
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/dist/dist.tex b/Doc/dist/dist.tex index 9e0cd24..cf1a785 100644 --- a/Doc/dist/dist.tex +++ b/Doc/dist/dist.tex @@ -663,6 +663,27 @@ To install data files directly in the target directory, an empty string should be given as the directory. +\subsection{Debugging the setup script} +\label{meta-data} + +Sometimes things go wrong, and the setup script doesn't do what the +developer wants. + +Distutils catches any exceptions when running the setup script, and +print a simple error message before the script is terminated. The +motivation for this behaviour is to not confuse administrators who +don't know much about Python and are trying to install a package. If +they get a big long traceback from deep inside the guts of Distutils, +they may think the package or the Python installation is broken +because they don't read all the way down to the bottom and see that +it's a permission problem. + +On the other hand, this doesn't help the developer to find the cause +of the failure. For this purpose, the DISTUTILS_DEBUG environment +variable can be set to anything except an empty string, and distutils +will now print detailed information what it is doing, and prints the +full traceback in case an exception occurrs. + \section{Writing the Setup Configuration File} \label{setup-config} |