Using pip to install single-file python modules

Question

I'm wondering if there's a way to "install" single-file python modules using pip (i.e. just have pip download the specified version of the file and copy it to site-packages).

I have a Django project that uses several 3rd-party modules which aren't proper distributions (django-thumbs and a couple others) and I want to pip freeze everything so the project can be easily installed elsewhere. I've tried just doing

pip install git+https://github.com/path/to/file.git

(and tried with the -e tag too) but pip complains that there's no setup.py file.

Edit: I should have mentioned - the reason I want to do this is so I can include the required module in a requirements.txt file, to make setting up the project on a new machine or new virtualenv easier.

Answer 1

pip requires a valid setup.py to install a python package. By definition every python package has a setup.py... What you are trying to install isn't a package but rather a single file module... what's wrong with doing something like:

git clone git+https://github.com/path/to/file.git /path/to/python/install/lib

I don't quite understand the logic behind wanting to install something that isn't a package with a package manager...