Gregor Hoffleit writes:
In Debian's case, the directive is to keep *all* system-wide configuration files in /etc. The /usr tree (less /usr/local) should potentially be mountable read-only. Variable data goes into /var. That's also the sketch of the Linux Filesystem Standard (now FHS).
Btw, I think as a consequence even site.py should be moved from lib/python1.X to /etc.
Not site.py, but sitecustomize.py, which is where local modifications should go. This is *not* included in the distribution, so it not an installation problem, but the site-admin would need to create a .pth in the shared area that added some directory to sys.path (say, /etc/python/site-packages) so that individual host-admins could add packages locally. But this begs the question: in such an environment, would it generally make sense to support host-specific additions?
In the end, I guess this is a philosophical question, and the answer will be different depending on your viewpoint (standalone Windoid/Macoid machines or homo/heterogeneous networked systems potentially sharing a common filespace).
And depending on how you think that shared filespace should be managed; we use shared spaces here for all the "extras" (but not the base installations), but we all of us that use that shared space can update it. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives