[Python-Dev] Order that site-packages is added to sys.path (original) (raw)

Barry A. Warsaw barry@zope.com
Tue, 12 Feb 2002 11:48:58 -0500

"GW" == Greg Ward <gward@python.net> writes:

GW> Looong ago, I tried to persuade Guido that giving the
GW> Distutils the power to override standard library modules
GW> would, on rare occasions, be a good and useful thing.  (Yet
GW> another idea stolen from Perl's MakeMaker, which can do
GW> precisely that.  Sometimes, it's useful.)  Guess who won?

distutils's --root option could be used to specific a different install directory than site-packages right? So conceivably site.py could prepend some directory onto sys.path, and distutils could be coaxed into installing there rather than site-packages. This might provide a principled way to override Python's standard library when you're really sure that's what you want to do.

-Barry