How can I deal with python eggs for multiple platforms in one location

Question

I want to install an egg using easy_install that is platform-dependent. easy_install puts the egg in the site-packages directory of the platform-independent part of the install. The name of the egg has the platform in it so there should be no conflict. But python will only load the first one it finds. Modifying the easy-install.pth file can change which one it finds, but that's pretty useless.

I can move the .egg files into a platform-depended packages directory and then use pkg_resources.require() to load them (or manually adjust the path).

Can anyone help me with a more generic way so that I can ensure that python will load the egg for the correct platform?

Answer 1

Try virtualenv : http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv

This helps you create isolated environment with it's own python interpreter + site_packages folder. Thus you never have any conflicts with packages installed in say local path.