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

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Mon Jan 14 19:37:13 CET 2008

glyph at divmod.com wrote:

I think the relevant link to change here would be ~/.local.

I have personally been using the ~/.local convention for a while, and I believe ~/.local/bin is where scripts should go. Python is not the only thing that can be locally installed, and the fact that it's ~/.local/lib/python2.6/site-packages suggests that ~/.local has the same layout as /usr (or /usr/local, for those who use that convention).

~/.local/bin or ~/bin ?

~/bin is the standard directory for user binaries. I can see how ~/.local/bin follows the idea of other directories. But ~/bin is more convenient than ~/.local/bin. I don't want to teach users how to change their .bashrc or .profile file for ~/.local/bin. A line like

if [ -d /bin ]; then PATH=/bin:$PATH fi

is in most .profile files (often commented out).

I'm proposing ~/bin for Unix (including Mac) and %APPDATA%/Python/Scripts for Windows. The Windows installer could then add the directory to the PATH environment and install a minimal bat file "@C:\Python26\python.exe %*" as python26.bat, too.

Christian

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