Saving the installation log generated from setup.py

Question

Is there a way to save the output that is generated during the installation of a program being installed using setup.py ? I want to write this into the setup.py script itself, not in the terminal when i run setup.py

Answer 1

Before the setup() function is called, redirect sys.stdout ( and sys.stderr to the log file. )

Make sure you revert back the stdout ( and stderr ) to their default references and print the contents of log file to stdout as well.

Your setup.py should look like this:

from setuptools import setup, find_packages
import sys

stdout = sys.stdout
stderr = sys.stderr

log_file = open('log', 'w')
sys.stdout = log_file
sys.stderr = log_file

setup ( 
        ...  ,
        ...
      )

# Make sure to close the log file. You could also use with to surround the setup()
# To ensure log file is closed in the event of exception.
log_file.close()

sys.stdout = stdout
sys.stderr = stderr

with open('log', 'r') as log_file:
    sys.stdout.write(log_file.read())