[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008 (original) (raw)

Jesse Noller jnoller at gmail.com
Sun May 4 16:17:36 CEST 2008

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 9:58 AM, <glyph at divmod.com> wrote: ...snip...

As I've said a dozen times in this thread already, the feature I'd like to get from a per-user installation location is that 'setup.py install', or at least some completely canonical distutils incantation, should work, by default, for non-root users; ideally non-administrators on windows as well as non-root users on unixish platforms.

This is a big +1 from me. The way I currently work around the "must be root to install stuff" on both OS/X and other Lin/Uni(xes) is via virtualenv.py and a lot of bash environment trickery. If nothing else comes out of this, I think what glyph points out is the ideal, and simplest goal. Ignoring the directory name debate, I would like to see this local "user" dir mirror the normal directory tree that packages installed from distutils/setuptools typically use, namely it should have the: lib/site-packages/ and bin/ directories, and a known parent name.

One thing that could be done is pick a default name for the parent, ala ~/Python - but let users override it with an environment variable if they so desire (PYTHON_USER_DIR?) so that those who want it hidden can have it hidden, and those of us who don't, don't.

-jesse

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