Pip install does not use symlinks for bufrtables if wheels are enabled

[cpaulik]

Running

pip install pybufr-ecmwf does not use symlinks for the BUFR tables.

This leads to 1.5 GB of used space for each environment in which it is installed in this way.

[cpaulik]

This is not really critical for me since I use my conda package but it might be interesting to know for others.

[jdkloe]

that's strange. I just did a test on my own linux machine, and there I do not see this symlink problem. The installed module in $HOME/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pybufr_ecmwf/ is just 18MB in size.
Could you give me some details on your machine and software/OS versions?

[cpaulik]

I've investigated a little bit and the reason for it is bdist_wheel which seems to be the default now. I'm using pip 8.1.1 and normal installation without the symlink problem can be achieved by disabling the building of wheels with the --no-binary flag

[jdkloe]

OK, thanks for your investigations. I am thinking of getting rid of these symlinks completely in a next version, but this will require some recoding. It may take a while before this is implemented.