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PyPI went online in late 2002, but easy_install wasn’t released until 2004.
Does anyone know how people installed stuff from PyPI before then? Did you download an sdist and unzip it manually?
I don’t even see a download link on this wayback snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20031101220800/http://www.python.org/pypi?:action=display&name=docutils&version=0.3
@pganssle a friend recalls: "Yeah, I downloaded a lot of source code and built modules from it back in the day. The source usually came with a 'setup.py' file that handled the build and install functions."
As an interesting aside, it seems that Python itself was on PyPI at the time (2004-04-13): https://web.archive.org/web/20040413032446/http://www.python.org/pypi?:action=display&name=Python&version=2.3.2