[Python-Dev] Python install layout and the PATH on win32 (original) (raw)

Glenn Linderman v+python at g.nevcal.com
Wed Mar 21 00:35:32 CET 2012

On 3/20/2012 4:25 PM, Mark Hammond wrote:

I think it does. Consider I've installed Python as a "system install". Now I want to install some other package - ideally that installer will request elevation - all well and good - the .py files are installed. However, next time I want to run Python, it will fail to generate the .pyc files - even though I'm an administrator. I would need to explicitly tell Python to execute "as administrator" (or run it from an already elevated command-prompt) to have things work as expected. Thus, the "usual" case would be that Python is unable to update any files in its install directory.

If Python installed for a single user didn't install into Program Files (which it probably couldn't do without an administrator providing credentials anyway) then it wouldn't be a problem - but then we have multiple possible default install locations, which sounds like more trouble than it is worth...

That said, there is an open bug in the tracker about the insecurity of a system install of python (exactly that the files are writable by anyone). So that would have to be solved first. I'd say this is definitely a separate issue from Van's discussion, and the only reason one might want to tie them together at all is "well, we're changing the directory layout anyway".

Indeed, the single user "place" isn't a single place, unless you consider the per-user $APPDATA environment variable sufficient to determine it (or the Windows API that returns the initial boot up value of $APPDATA/ %APPDATA%, which is the preferred technique for code). But it does solve the security problem (stuff in APPDATA is accessible only to a single login by default). So that might be justification for putting it there, for single users.

For multi-user installs, %PROGRAMFILES% is appropriate, but, like I've heard some Linux distributions do, *.pyc might have to be prebuilt and installed along with Python (or generated during install, instead of waiting for first use). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20120320/83d45f1c/attachment.html>

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