[Zope-dev] lxml is hard to install (was Re: How to test changes to ZTK packages?)

Jim Fulton jim at zope.com
Tue Jun 30 16:35:38 EDT 2009


On Jun 30, 2009, at 2:35 PM, Tres Seaver wrote:

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> Tim Hoffman wrote:
>> I have to chime in here too
>>
>> lxml is a real pain and seems to be problematic to get a  
>> straightforward
>> build for packages other than ZTK as well.  I have had varying  
>> success
>> building lxml even under ubuntu - success seems to be dependant on  
>> the type
>> of build defined.
>
> While I know that Mac people often report problems building lxml, I
> never have issues building lxml on Linux:  the '--static-deps'  
> option is
> a sufficient workaround for variants with too-old versions of  
> libxml2 /
> libxslt.


I'm not familiar with the static-deps option. To what? Its setup.py?

It didn't install cleanly for me on Centos 4.  (I've generally had  
difficulty with libxml2 and libxslt on Red Hat based systems,) I'm  
sure if I screwed around with it, I could get it to work.  I don't  
want to screw around with it just to work on ZTK libraries, which  
don't actually depend on it.  I will if I have to.  I ended up using  
an Ubuntu VM to work on it.  I'd prefer not to have to.

I'm sad to say this.  I think lxml is a worthy project.  It's a shame  
that the system installs of libxml2 and libxslt are such a PITA.  I  
wonder if it would be better for lxml to include it's own copies of  
these libraries that it built and linked against statically.

Will lxml look somewhere in /usr/local? I wonder if hand-built libxml2  
and libxslt libraries in /usr/local would make lxml easier to deal with.

Jim

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation




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