CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlinuxeasy-installegg
Classified
Classified

Reputation: 6070

Can't install python egg due to directory permissions

I'm still getting familiar with python and python eggs so sorry if this is a stupid question. I want to know why easy_install appears to install the egg for the whole server to use rather than just locally for the account that tried to install it.

I created a simple helloworld module/egg and tried to install it on a server I have an account on. However, the account doesn't have root access (it's a tester's account). I get a "Permission denied" error message when installing it. When installing the module, it is trying to install to /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site_packages/blah/blah/blah. It's pretty clear it's b/c I don't have root access to write to this location.

easy_install hello-1.0-py2.7.egg

On my laptop (my account has root access), I can run the cmd above and see the module is installed by running 'pip freeze'. The slight difference is that Anaconda is running/installed on my laptop and seemed to be doing the package management for me.

So back to my original question; how does easy_install install eggs that we create ourselves? I was hoping/assuming it would install the module in my tester's account and not to /usr/local/lib/blha/blah/blah for all users to use/access. Is this an incorrect assumption? If this is incorrect thinking, how would someone install a module/egg where the account doesn't have root access? Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 690

Answers (2)

mhawke
mhawke

Reputation: 87134

An option is to use virtualenv which allows you to create multiple virtual environments for Python, each with its own set of libraries.

Just create a virtualenv and then you can then install your module within it without requiring write access to the system Python installation.

There is a tutorial here: http://simononsoftware.com/virtualenv-tutorial/, but simply install virtualenv then:

$ cd $HOME
$ virtualenv test
$ cd test
$ source bin/activate
$ easy_install /path/to/hello-1.0-py2.7.egg

The package should be installed into ~/test/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Upvotes: 1

James Mills
James Mills

Reputation: 19050

Se per easy_install or pip as a limited user? you'll want to use the --prefix option to easy_install and/or -d or -s.

I believe you could do something as simple as:

easy_install --prefix=$HOME hello-1.0-py2.7.egg

Upvotes: 3

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