why do I keep getting this message when installing saying EntryPoint must be in 'name=module:attrs [extras]

Question

Hi I am on OSx Mavericks, using python 2.7 and pip version 6.0.8 and setuptools version 12.2.

When I try to install my project I get warning messages but installs successfully

$ python setup.py install --user

if I use distutils I get below message which probably its setup doesn't have kwarg entry_points. /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py: 267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'entry_points' warnings.warn(msg)

but when I try to install using pip the following way, I get below error messages and install doesn't continues:

$ pip install --user --editable .

if I use pip even if I have distutils setup imported I get the below error message.

Obtaining file:///Users/Me/Development/pyclones/git-maildiff
    error in maildiff setup command: ("EntryPoint must be in 'name=module:attrs [extras]' format", 'git-maildiff=scripts.git-maildiff')
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    error in maildiff setup command: ("EntryPoint must be in 'name=module:attrs [extras]' format", 'git-maildiff=scripts.git-maildiff')

    ----------------------------------------
    Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /Users/Me/Development/pyclones/git-maildiff

whilst I have call to setup like this

setup(
    name='maildiff',
    version=VERSION,
    author='Sanjeev Kumar',
    author_email='[email protected]',
    packages=['emaildiff', 'emaildiff/mail',],
    py_modules=['maildiff_cmd', 'version', 'send'],
    data_files = ['VERSION'],
    scripts=['scripts/git-maildiff'],
    license='LICENSE',
    description='Package to email color git diff',
    long_description=open('README.md').read(),
    entry_points={
    'console_scripts':
        ['git-maildiff=scripts.git-maildiff']
                }
)

can anyone help me why I am getting this, I prefer to go with pip because i can use pip to uninstall it later, but I think their isn't any command like setup.py uninstall or remove.

Answer 1

The entry point you define in these two lines:

'console_scripts':
        ['git-maildiff=scripts.git-maildiff']

has a - in it, I'm not sure if that's supported (git-maildiff is not a valid Python module name). Further, it misses the function name to call: main.

You could first try adding main:

'console_scripts':
        ['git-maildiff=scripts.git-maildiff:main']

If that doesn't work, rename your script to remove the -. I think you can still leave git-maildiff as the entry-point name and just rename the module:

'console_scripts':
        ['git-maildiff=scripts.git_maildiff:main']

This should give you a git-maildiff script that calls the git_maildiff module. You'll have to rename your module file itself too.