[Python-ideas] Add a site.cfg to keep a persistent list of paths (original) (raw)

Doug Hellmann doug.hellmann at gmail.com
Thu Oct 21 14:14:46 CEST 2010

On Oct 21, 2010, at 7:21 AM, Paul Moore wrote:

On 21 October 2010 00:35, Floris Bruynooghe <flub at devork.be> wrote:

I've read your and Ian's responses and still don't understand what setup.py develop brings to the party which can't be done with simple PYTHONPATH. I'm glad it's not just me!

Using develop does more than just modify the import path.

It also generates the meta data, such as entry points, and re-generates any console scripts defined by my setup.py so that they point to the version of code in the sandbox. After I run develop, any Python process on the system using the same python interpreter will run the code in my sandbox instead of the version "installed" in site-packages. That includes any of the command line programs or plugins defined in my setup.py, and even applies to processes that don't run as my user.

I use these features every day, since our application depends on a few daemons that run as root (it's a system management app, so it needs root privileges to do almost anything interesting).

Doug

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