[Python-Dev] Python install layout and the PATH on win32 (Rationale part 1: Regularizing the layout) (original) (raw)

Brian Curtin brian at python.org
Sat Mar 24 16:39:09 CET 2012

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 07:19, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:35 AM, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:

Just dumping things in a directory adjacent to the corresponding scripts is the original virtualenv, and it still works just dandy -- most people just don't know this.  (And again, if there are tools out there that don't support single-directory virtualenvs, the best answer is probably to fix them.) Not to mention that CPython gained native support for that layout in 2.6 via main.py files (although I stuffed up and forgot to add it to the What's New before the release). I'll chime in on the -1 side here as well. If you want easy cross-platform execution of main, use the -m switch.

I love the -m option but what does it have to do with unifying the install layout? One is about executing main and one is about a directory structure.

Indeed, avoiding such cross-platform inconsistencies with regards to the location of stdlib modules was one of the major arguments in favour of adding the original incarnation of the switch way back in Python 2.4.

Ok, so it is about directory structure, but about the standard library. Since part of this proposal is about Scripts vs. bin, how does -m help you there?

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