[Python-ideas] Add a command line option to adjust sys.path? (was Re: Add a site.cfg to keep a persistent list of paths) (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sat Oct 23 16:21:09 CEST 2010

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Scott Dial <scott+python-ideas at scottdial.com> wrote:

On 10/21/2010 2:43 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

This idea is only aimed at developers. To run an actual Python application that needs additional modules, either install it properly or put it in a zipfile or directory, put a main.py at the top level and just run the zipfile/directory directly. If this is only aimed at developers, then those developers why isn't, PYTHONPATH="versionA:${PYTHONPATH}" python runtests.py PYTHONPATH="versionB:${PYTHONPATH}" python runtests.py , completely and utterly sufficient for the job.

Without the addition of the ability to supply a .pth file instead, I would tend to agree with you. There's a reason I'd never actually made the suggestion before, despite first thinking of it ages ago. (Although, I'll also point out that your suggestion doesn't work on Windows, which has its own idiosyncratic way of dealing with environment variables).

The proposed command line switch would also be compatible with -E, which is not the case for any approach based on modifying PYTHONPATH.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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