Why would python setup.py ignore --prefix?

Question

I have a python project using setuptools via setup.py for installation. When I provide no arguments to python setup.py install things install into the standard --user directory in ~/.local. However, when I provide --prefix ~/opt/myproject, that gets ignored by the install command and things still get pushed into ~/.local. It seems that whatever directories I specify, the 'user' scheme is selected.

I'm not doing anything special in my setup.py, but I can post whatever code is relevant to help debugging.

Answer 1

I've seen this behavior with certain versions of setuptools. If you're importing from setuptools try importing from distutils instead and see if that solves it.

Answer 2

Is --prefix ~/opt/myproject exactly how your are using the command? I would recommend two things. First, the --prefix argument needs an equal sign, so it should look like this:

--prefix=~/opt/myproject

Second, I would use the full path. I'm not sure if using the ~ will work, it might, but you'll probably have better luck using the full path:

python setup.py install --prefix=/home/username/opt/myproject

You can read more about the prefix scheme here.

Answer 3

Do you have default options in ~/.pydistutils.cfg?