pip editable install on read-only filesystem

Question

is it possible to do an editable pip install from a directory located on read-only filesystem? Right now setup tools is trying to write an egg file into the source directory:

$ pip install -e /tf/stuff/
Obtaining file:///tf/stuff
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    running egg_info
    writing requirements to src/stuff.egg-info/requires.txt
    error: [Errno 30] Read-only file system: 'src/stuff.egg-info/requires.txt'

    ----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tf/stuff/

The docs say:

For local projects, the "SomeProject.egg-info" directory is created relative to the project path. This is one advantage over just using setup.py develop, which creates the "egg-info" directly relative the current working directory.

Answer 1

If you have any writable filesystem in your environment you might be able to do what I did. I created a symbolic link in my source directory (src/stuff.egg-info in your example) that pointed to a location that is writable (perhaps on a different read-write filesystem) and was able to get pip install -e . to work.