if pywin32 has been manually installed, setuptools still doesn't detect it

[zooko]

If I add pywin32 to _auto_deps.py and install the "pywin32-214.win32-py2.5.exe" file from ​http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/ , then the following weirdness occurs:

$ python -c 'import pkg_resources;print pkg_resources.require("pywin32")
[pywin32 214 (c:\python25\lib\site-packages)]
$ python ./setup.py build

...

error: Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('pywin32')

So, pkg_resources says it is there, but setuptools doesn't consider the requirement to be already satisfied.

Is this another instance of ​http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue17 (easy_install will install a package that is already there)?

[zooko]

I made a minimal version of this. Put the following into a file named setup.py in a new empty directory:

import pkg_resources
if pkg_resources.require("pywin32"):
    print "Yes, pkg_resources says that pywin32 is already installed."
from setuptools import setup
setup(name='mindeponpywin32', install_requires=['pywin32'])

Then run the following command:

$ python ./setup.py develop

It will say something like:

Yes, pkg_resources says that pywin32 is already installed.
running develop

...

Processing dependencies for mindeponpywin32==0.0.0
Searching for pywin32
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/pywin32/
Reading http://sf.net/projects/pywin32
Reading http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group=78018
No local packages or download links found for pywin32
error: Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('pywin32')

[zooko]

I updated ​http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue17 (easy_install will install a package that is already there) with the minimal test case from #comment:1.

[cgalvan]

Note that once #668 is resolved, switching to Distribute, this issue may or may not be resolved as a result.

[zooko]

​http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue17 claims that this issue was fixed in setuptools-0.6c10. We currently have a version (variant) of setuptools which is newer than and derived from 0.6c10 in our build system so if it is true that this was fixed (and if the distribute tool that we intend to switch to soon also has the fix) then we can close this ticket.

[davidsarah]

See also #1274 (eliminate pywin32 dependency).

[davidsarah]

This is invalid given that we're about to eliminate the pywin32 dependency completely (in ​http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/attachment/ticket/1435/dependency-updates.darcs.patch).