Getting sys.path out of buildout

A wrinkly part of buildout‘s design is that the PYTHONPATH is not easily available outside of scripts generated by buildout itself.

I’ve been using the following workaround in some of my development tools for a while and found it quite helpful, even though it’s hacky and rough around the edges:

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -e bin/wpy ]; then
    bin/buildout install wpy
fi
export PYTHONPATH=$(bin/wpy -c "import sys; print ':'.join([p for p in sys.path if not p.startswith('/usr')])")
# do real work here

This needs a part that installs a python interpreter into the buildout; I’m using this in my ~/.buildout/default.cfg, since all projects I deal with have a [test] part:

[wpy]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs = ${test:eggs}
interpreter = wpy

A variation on this theme is this script which generates a TAGS file without the need for a special recipe (like z3c.recipe.tag) just to get the PYTHONPATH:

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -e bin/wpy ]; then
    bin/buildout install wpy
fi
export IFS=
PATHS=$(bin/wpy -c "import sys; print '\n'.join([p for p in sys.path if not p.startswith('/usr')])")
echo $PATHS | ctags --python-kinds=-i -R -e -L -