From: Bastian Kleineidam [mailto:calvin@cs.uni-sb.de]
it is installed directly into the C:\Applications\Python20 directory, which is the Python installation directory. This is not what I would want, especially as the default action.
There was a somewhat lengthy discussion about installation dirs at the beginning of the year, including some mighty words from Guido. You can follow the discussion on the archives, here is a wrapup: http://www.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/20 00-February/001181.html I think in most cases it boils down to installing things in sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix.
OK. So the current behaviour is by design. That's fair enough - I don't personally like it, but that isn't a good reason for it to change.
Nothing prevents you from using your custom install scheme though (with --install-lib and such).
Agreed. I guess that is what I should do. Two questions spring to mind: 1. Is it possible for me to specify a default --install-lib value which will be used in all installs unless overridden (effectively a site preferences file for distutils)? If not, is it feasible to add such a thing? 2. What happens with binary distributions? (I've not tried building one of these yet, so it may be obvious...) Can I install a binary distribution and specify --install-lib, or is the bdist_wininst version unable to accept command line overrides? Actually, a third (Python) question: If I do add a "site library" directory, what do I need to do to get Python to recognise it by default? Looking at the documentation of the site module, it looks like Unix has a site-python directory already, via sys.prefix, whereas Windows doesn't. Should/could I just set sys.prefix somehow? (Maybe this should be directed to somewhere like the Python newsgroup, though). Paul