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

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Sun May 4 18:14:06 CEST 2008

First, Skip, I only care about the default behavior. There's already a way to do it differently: PYTHONPATH. So, Fred, I think what you're arguing for is to drop this feature entirely. Or is there some other use for a new way to allow users to explicitly add something to sys.path, aside from PYTHONPATH? It seems that it would add more complexity and I can't see what the value would be.

PYTHONPATH is lacking one feature which is important for lots of packages and setuptools. The directories in PYTHONPATH are just added to sys.path. But setuptools require a site package directory. Maybe a new env var PYTHONSITEPATH could solve the problem.

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.

The implementation of my PEP provides a new option for install:

$ python setup.py install --user

Is it sufficient for you?

Christian

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