[Python-Dev] 3.5 release schedule PEP (original) (raw)

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Thu Sep 25 03:59:36 CEST 2014

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 6:50 AM, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:

Donald Stufft wrote:

One thing about *nix is even though you can’t write to your normal Python install location without root, invoking pip with permissions (assuming you have them) is as easy as prefacing it with sudo in most cases. Does Windows have an equivalent or do you need to launch a whole new shell? Unfortunately not. The "easy way" is for the executable to declare that it needs administrative privileges, and then the OS will take over and let you approve/reject/sign-in/etc. according to your settings.

When you say the executable declares this, is that a static (compile/link time) declaration, or a run-time one? That is, could pip defer the declaration until it's parsed its command line args and decided that it'll be installing into the system directory, but NOT make that declaration if it's given --user, or if it's running inside a venv, or anything else that means it doesn't need that power? If so, that could actually be a very powerful feature: a user without admin privs (or choosing not to exercise them) is still able to install into a venv, but if s/he forgets to activate the venv, the "hey, I want to modify system files" prompt will be the alarm that says the situation is not what was expected. That's what happens on my Linux system - I get errors back if I don't use sudo, but in a venv, everything works without being root.

ChrisA

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