[Python-Dev] [python] Re: PEP: per user site-packages directory (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Sun Jan 13 02:24:12 CET 2008

Gregory P. Smith wrote:

On 1/12/08, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de_ _<mailto:lists at cheimes.de>> wrote: Christian Heimes wrote: > MA Lemburg has suggested a per user site-packages directory in the > "pkgutil, pkgresource and Python 3.0 name space packages" thread. I've > written a short PEP about it for Python 2.6 and 3.0. Addition: An user has requested a new option to suppress the user site packages directory: -s : don't add user site directory to sys.path; also PYTHONNOUSERSITE

+0.5 Thanks for writing this up as a PEP. My main suggestion was going to be the ability to turn it off as you already mentioned. However, please consider leaving it off by default to avoid problems for installed python scripts importing user supplied code. For shared hosting environments where this becomes really useful users can easily add the -s (or whatever flag is chosen) to their programs themselves. I don't know what that'd mean on windows where #! lines don't exist. Yet another file extension to imply the flag (yuck)? A .cmd wrapper script to run python with the flag (ugh)?

+1 from me on implementing it and having it on by default for Windows.

Why do you think the user namespace overriding the system namespace be more of a problem for Windows than other platforms?

This would be a really useful feature for me and it would be a shame for it not to be on by default on Windows (and another set of complexities for setuptools I suspect).

Michael Foord

For security reasons we also need it disabled when the getuid() != geteuid() to avoid user supplied code being executed as another user. Defaulting to disabled would mean that security could be left up to the end user to mess up. (many systems do not allow setuid #! scripts but this issue would still apply to things run under sudo) -gps ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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