Python distutils installer and user_options

I found the standard doco for distutils to be pretty appalling. It is really only useful for simple cases. The API Reference is slightly more useful, but still not great. I couldn't find a good explanation of how user_options worked to pass extra stuff into the setup script.

Here a few things I found out after a lot of mucking around:

• Tuples that go into the user_options array should look like:

  ('mysql-root-passwd=', "p", 'MySQL root password for local server [default: None]')

  The '=' on the first element tells distutils this options should have a value (i.e. it is not a boolean option)
  
• Options get stored as object variables in your class so the one above turns up as self.mysql_root_passwd - note the substitution for '-'.
  
• To subclass the install command inherit from

  from distutils.command.install import install

  and set

  'cmdclass': {'install': WhitetrashInstallData}

  in your call to setup.
  
• If the doco sucks, take a look at the code:

  /usr/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/install_data.py

  helped me.