So, I was installing FormEncode on some servers today and ran across a fun ‘warngin’.

Check it out:

Running FormEncode-1.0.1/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-iKCYq0/FormEncode-1.0.1/egg-dist-tmp-3yiKdV
warngin: no files found matching '*.py' under directory '.'
warngin: no files found matching '*.html' under directory 'docs'
no previously-included directories found matching '**/.svn'
zip_safe flag not set; analyzing archive contents...
formencode.fields: module references __file__
formencode.api: module references __file__
formencode.util.doctest24: module references __file__
formencode.util.doctest24: module MAY be using inspect.getsourcefile
FormEncode 1.0.1 is already the active version in easy-install.pth

Installed /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/FormEncode-1.0.1-py2.3.egg
Processing dependencies for FormEncode==1.0.1
Finished processing dependencies for FormEncode==1.0.1

At first, I naively emails the modules author, Ian Bicking. Shortly thereafter I realized that the message most likely wasn’t from his module, but the distribution utility used to install it.

I got home and quickly rushed to my Inbox, which revealed that Ian had confirmed my thoughts. A quick google search (which I should have done in the first place) showed that this is an old “bug” from waaay back when with distutils. It kind of hurt to know that some of my servers have code that old on them…Good thing they’re not publicly accessible.

Man, it really helps to do some quick searching/checking before jumping the gun, and man do I need to get these systems up to date!