How to handle dependency on scipy in setup.py

Question

I am trying to create a setup.py for a project that depends on SciPy. The following setup.py reproduces this:

setup(
    name='test',
    version='0.1',
    install_requires=['scipy']
)

When installing this using python setup.py develop it generates the following error:

ImportError: No module named numpy.distutils.core

However, when I install scipy using pip, it installed it from a wheel, and it works just fine.

So, my questions is, how can I create a setup.py that depends on SciPy? Why won't setuptools install dependencies from wheels? Would this work better when using Python 3 (we plan to migrate anyway, so if it works there, I'll just wait until the migration is complete).

I am using Python 2.7.8 on Mac OS X 10.10.1 with setuptools 3.6 and pip 1.5.6.

Answer 1

Ultimately, this worked for me:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from setuptools import setup, Extension
from setuptools.command.build_ext import build_ext as _build_ext

#
# This cludge is necessary for horrible reasons: see comment below and
# http://stackoverflow.com/q/19919905/447288
#
class build_ext(_build_ext):
    def finalize_options(self):
        _build_ext.finalize_options(self)
        # Prevent numpy from thinking it is still in its setup process:
        __builtins__.__NUMPY_SETUP__ = False
        import numpy
        self.include_dirs.append(numpy.get_include())

setup(
    #
    # Amazingly, `pip install scipy` fails if `numpy` is not already installed.
    # Since we cannot control the order that dependencies are installed via
    # `install_requires`, use `setup_requires` to ensure that `numpy` is available
    # before `scipy` is installed.
    #
    # Unfortunately, this is *still* not sufficient: `numpy` has a guard to
    # check when it is in its setup process that we must circumvent with
    # the `cmdclass`.
    #
    setup_requires=['numpy'],
    cmdclass={'build_ext':build_ext},
    install_requires=[
        'numpy',
        'scipy',
    ],
    ...
)