In setup.py or pip requirements file, how to control order of installing package dependencies?

Question

I've got a Python package with its setup.py having dependencies declared via the usual way, in install_requires=[...]. One of the packages there, scikits.timeseries, has a setup.py expecting numpy to already be installed, thus, I'd like some way to have numpy installed first. For this case and in general, can the order of dependency installation be controlled? How?

Currently the order in which setup.py pulls down dependencies (as listed in the arg install_requires) seems practically random. Also, in the setup.py setup(...) I tried using the arg:

extras_require={'scikits.timeseries': ['numpy']}

...without success, the order of installing dependencies was unaffected.

I also tried setting up a pip requirements file, but there too, pip's order of installing dependencies didn't match the line-order of the requirements file, so no luck.

Another possibility would be to have a system call near the top of setup.py, to install numpy before the setup(...) call, but I hope there's a better way. Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

If scikits.timeseries needs numpy, then it should declare it as a dependency. If it did, then pip would handle things for you (I'm pretty sure setuptools would, too, but I haven't used it in a long while). If you control scikits.timeseries, then you should fix it's dependency declarations.

Answer 2

Use setup_requires parameter, for instance to install numpy prior scipy put it into setup_requires and add __builtins__.__NUMPY_SETUP__ = False hook to get numpy installed correctly:

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

def run(self):
    __builtins__.__NUMPY_SETUP__ = False
    import numpy