Installing an EGG (.egg) file with Windows XP

I recently had to install the simplejson package on my Windows XP machine and when I downloaded the package from the website, I was surprised to see that the package had an .egg extension. Some Googling got me to where I knew I needed to use easy_install to perform the installation.

I have used easy_install in the past, but it was on a Apple Mac OSX platform, so the instructions were of little help. Here is how I installed the EGG file.

1. Download & Install setuptools
2. Configure your PATH variable to include C:\Python25\Scripts\
   1. Right-click on My Computer
   2. Select Properties
   3. Select the Advanced tab
   4. Click on the Environment Variables button
   5. In User Variables, select PATH, then click Edit
   6. Add “;C:\Python25\Scripts\” to the end of the current value
   7. Click OK in the Edit User Variable window
   8. Click OK in the Environment Variables window
   9. Click OK in the System Properties window
3. Open a new Command Prompt
4. Run easy_install path\to\simplejson-2.0.9-py2.5-win32.egg

That’s it.

Reference(s):

• Installing easy_install…could be easier
• EasyInstall