2009/5/9 Chris Withers <chris@simplistix.co.uk>:
Martin v. Löwis wrote:
I thought .pth files just had python in them?
Not at all - they never did. They have paths in them.
I've certainly seen them with python in, and that's what I hate about them...
AIUI, there was a small special case that lines starting with "import" are executed (see the source of site.py for details). This exception has been exploited (some would say "abused", but I'm trying to be unbiased here) by setuptools, at least, to do path manipulations and such. PEP 382 does not provide the import exception: "Unlike .pth files on the top level, lines starting with "import" are not supported in per-package .pth files". It's not clear to me what impact this would have on setuptools (probably none, as top-level .pth files aren't changed). Paul.