Why `setup.py install` does not update the script file?

Question

In the setup.py file, I write like this:

from distutils.core import setup
setup(
    # skip a lot of information here..
    scripts = ["chilin2/ChiLin2.py"],
)

I've setup my package successfully at first time. After a while I update the line 209 of the script into this:

$ sed -n 209p chilin2/ChiLin2.py
        macs2_on_merged.param["control_opt"] = "-c " + macs2_on_merged.input["control"]

And then run setup.py again

$ sudo python3 setup.py install
running install
running build
running build_py
running build_scripts
running install_lib
running install_scripts
changing mode of /usr/local/bin/ChiLin2.py to 755
running install_egg_info
Removing /usr/local/lib/python3.2/site-packages/chilin2-0.1-py3.2.egg-info
Writing /usr/local/lib/python3.2/site-packages/chilin2-0.1-py3.2.egg-info

However, I found that the script file hasn't been changed..

$ sed -n 209p /usr/local/bin/ChiLin2.py
        macs2_on_merged["control_opt"] = "-c " + macs2_on_merged.input["control"]

I tried setup.py clean and then setup.py install again, but that doesn't solve the problem. Does anyone have ideas about this?

( I found that the Chilin2.py in the package has an elder time stamp than that in system directory. Is that the reason that setup.py install doesn't update? Is there a way to solve this? )

Answer 1

try to uninstall this package and then reinstall it.

pip can uninstall a package :

pip uninstall *packagename*

Answer 2

I found that the Chilin2.py in the package has an elder time stamp than that in system directory.

This is strange. Can you reproduce the bug with these steps:

1. Create script.
2. setup.py install (with an --install or --user option to avoid sudo)
3. Edit script.
4. setup.py install
5. ?

If you did that (i.e. you edited the script after its first installation), I don’t understand how the latest script can have a modification time that is older than the installed script.

Is that the reason that setup.py install doesn't update?

Definitely: distutils compares file modification times to see if it needs to re-build (for scripts, the build phase consists of copying the files to a temp build dir and adjusting the shebangs).

Is there a way to solve this?

$ touch chilin2/ChiLin2.py