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

Jan Claeys lists at janc.be
Sun Jan 20 17:57:55 CET 2008

Op zondag 13-01-2008 om 10:45 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Christian Heimes:

Gregory P. Smith wrote: > 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)?

So you prefer to make the per use site-package directory an opt-in option? I prefer it as an opt-out option. It's enabled by default, unless the user disables the feature with -s.

One possible issue with enabling it by default could be that less-experienced users can accidentally break the system configuration tools written in python used by several linux distros (Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora/Red Hat, ...).

There should be a way for distro developers to make sure the users local 'site-packages' is not used when running those tools.

I'd rather have to set/uncomment an environment variable on my system than having 100 "normal" users break their systems accidentally... ;-)

-- Jan Claeys

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