NT escaping in shebang in easy_install

Originally reported by: Anonymous

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Hi.
As far as I can see, there is still escaping of spaces in the shebang in the current version:
https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/src/0e53d50b76aabfdee7b6166593e41d41a16e6a25/setuptools/command/easy_install.py?at=default#cl-1546
I find this quite unfortunate, as this is of very limited use, but prevents some valid use cases.

The current code quotes all shebang strings that contain spaces. On all POSIX systems that I tried (current Ubuntu, ancient redhat, current OS X) this is illegal and simply doesn't work. Given the name of the function, it seems this was intended for windows NT (?).

However, this escaping prevents valid use cases, for example it doesn't allow the specification of "/bin/env /bin/python". I think there is a workaround for this specific case. However I have a use case where I need a different command to produce the correct python executable. This would be easy, except for the escaping.

If it is possible to detect being on a posix platform (probably not that easy?), we could just skip the escaping, as it is never beneficial. If this is not possible, maybe just skip the escaping all together? The benefit seems very platform specific.

Thanks,
Andy

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issue/188

Original comment by t3kcit (Bitbucket: t3kcit, GitHub: Unknown):

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Sorry I was not logged in :-/

Original comment by guyroz (Bitbucket: guyroz, GitHub: Unknown):

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well, escaping doesn't work either:

11:55:09 ⮀ Guys-MacBook-Air ⮀ ~/infinigit ⮀ easy_install
zsh: /Users/guy/.virtualenvs/with space/bin/easy_install: bad interpreter: /Users/guy/.virtualenvs/with\: no such file or directory
error: No urls, filenames, or requirements specified (see --help)

11:55:32 ⮀ Guys-MacBook-Air ⮀ ~/infinigit ⮀ cat ~/.virtualenvs/with\ space/bin/easy_install
#!/Users/guy/.virtualenvs/with\ space/bin/python
# EASY-INSTALL-ENTRY-SCRIPT: 'setuptools==3.4.4','console_scripts','easy_install'
__requires__ = 'setuptools==3.4.4'
import sys
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point

if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(
        load_entry_point('setuptools==3.4.4', 'console_scripts', 'easy_install')()
    )

Original comment by guyroz (Bitbucket: guyroz, GitHub: Unknown):

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you should avoid directories with spaces on unix systems, this won't be the only incompatibility problem you'll run into.

Original comment by guyroz (Bitbucket: guyroz, GitHub: Unknown):

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escaping does not work either; I don't know of a solution to white-spaces in shebang lines on Unix. if there is one, re-open and we'll see how to implement it. but from a quick search spaces are not supported in shebangs (again, on Unix).

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Indeed, I wrote a blog about how Unix doesn't support spaces in filenames. You may be right that skipping the quoting behavior (and just raising an error) would be better on Unix systems.

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Spaces are supported in shebangs on Windows.

Original comment by guyroz (Bitbucket: guyroz, GitHub: Unknown):

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yes, of-course, I was referring to Unix; modified my comment so it'll be clear

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Guy, I think the OP is not requesting that Setuptools support spaces in filenames in shebang lines, but rather requesting that Setuptools not escape the shebang so that one can provide multiple entities in the shebang line.

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Reading through the source, it appears to me as if "executable" is allowed to be supplied, but options to that executable should be present as options to the original script text.

What this ticket is requesting is that "executable" be interpreted to allow multiple entities on Unix and be considered to be a single entity on Windows. That would be a bad choice.

@t3kcit would it be possible in your use case to instead pass a script with something like script_text="#!/usr/bin/env script param", executable="/usr/bin/env" ?

The way I read the code, the 'script' and 'param' would be included in the resulting script and /usr/bin/env would be replaced by /usr/bin/env and there wouldn't be any quoted characters.

Let me know what you find.

Original comment by guyroz (Bitbucket: guyroz, GitHub: Unknown):

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@t3kcit could you describe in more details what is your use-case? what are you trying to replace and with what?

Original comment by t3kcit (Bitbucket: t3kcit, GitHub: Unknown):

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Thanks a lot for your replies and sorry for being unclear. I think Jason got it right. I basically want to pass parameters to the shebang executable.
Unfortunately I didn't understand the proposed solution. Could you please point me to the documentation of "script_text" and which version it was added in?

Thanks a lot!

Andy

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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When I mention 'script_text', I'm referring to the parameter to the get_script_header function.

It's hard to infer from the description how you're using that call, but because you referenced it explicitly, I'm presuming you're calling that function directly or you've at least traced the behavior in your usage to that function call.

@t3kcit can you provide a description of what you're trying to accomplish (i.e. what are your inputs)?

Original comment by t3kcit (Bitbucket: t3kcit, GitHub: Unknown):

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Sorry to be unclear. I use (or want to use) something like the below:

#!python

   options={
       'build_scripts': {
           'executable': '/my/own/env give-me-python',
       },
   }

in the call to setuptools setup function.
The intention is to have the shebang in my scripts be "#!/my/own/env give-me-python".
(similar to "/bin/env python").

This ends up in the function "get_script_header" function, where it is escaped.
Basically what I want is to set the shebang at setup time to be the above. I thought the options I give above were the way to achieve this, but I might be mistaken.

Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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@t3kcit: what if you set executable to '/my/own/env', but then in the scripts themselves, have a shebang:

#!/any/executable/will/become/my/own/env give-me-python
...

Will that work for your purposes?

Original comment by t3kcit (Bitbucket: t3kcit, GitHub: Unknown):

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I would prefer not to change the scripts if possible. I have to do this to a lot of packages and limiting my changes to the setup.py script will hopefully make it easier to maintain forks.