Installing ipython on MacOS X tries to install to /System

Trying to install ipython “out of the box” on Mac OS X 10.7 using pip fails

It looks like it’s trying to install files into “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share”

There’s no reason anything should be installed in there by pip.

Related? https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/295 and https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/1231#issuecomment-3366087

[schwa@ungoliant] ~$ pip install ipython
Downloading/unpacking ipython
  Running setup.py egg_info for package ipython

    no previously-included directories found matching 'IPython/deathrow'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'IPython/frontend/html/notebook/static/mathjax'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching 'docs/#*'
    warning: no previously-included files found matching 'docs/man/*.1'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/attic'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/build'
    no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/gh-pages'
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*~' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.flc' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyo' found anywhere in distribution
    warning: no previously-included files matching '.dircopy.log' found anywhere in distribution
Installing collected packages: ipython
  Running setup.py install for ipython
    error: could not create '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share': Permission denied
    Complete output from command /usr/bin/python -c "import setuptools;__file__='/Users/schwa/build/ipython/setup.py';exec(compile(open(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --single-version-externally-managed --record /var/folders/c9/pqvs14g940j9q5dxgh8njsnh0000gn/T/pip-eBq04h-record/install-record.txt:
    running install

running build

running build_py

running install_lib

copying build/lib/IPython/.git_commit_info.ini -> /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/IPython

running install_data

creating /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share

error: could not create '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share': Permission denied

----------------------------------------
Command /usr/bin/python -c "import setuptools;__file__='/Users/schwa/build/ipython/setup.py';exec(compile(open(__file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --single-version-externally-managed --record /var/folders/c9/pqvs14g940j9q5dxgh8njsnh0000gn/T/pip-eBq04h-record/install-record.txt failed with error code 1
Storing complete log in /Users/schwa/Library/Logs/pip.log
[schwa@ungoliant] ~$ 

[akvadrako]

The workaround (at least for ipython) is to add these lines to ~/.pydistutils.cfg:

[install]
install-data=/usr/local
install-scripts=/usr/local/bin

[carljm]

@SamB Well, it’s a bad interaction between a not-very-sophisticated feature in distutils (data_files), which is in the CPython tree, and Apple’s choice to lay out OS X system installs of Python differently from any other Python installation, and in a way that violates distutils’ assumption (legitimate with an unmodified Python build) that site-packages is located beneath sys.prefix. So you can take your pick of where you want to lay the blame there 😉

The most likely path to getting the bug fixed in a reasonable time frame would actually be for ipython’s setup.py to detect OS X framework builds and leave out the data_files kwarg in that case. That would be quite easy to do.