So, I've finally been able to kick my python 2.5 boat anchor, and I'm now relishing in the delightful future of 2.6. Two things struck me though, digging into PEP 370's (per user site-packages) behavior. The first is this - when you install a package (say, pip) into the .local directory via the --user command, the package ends up in the correct lib directory; but the binary get dropped into ./local/bin - this seems wrong. The reason being, is that what if I also have python 2.7 (which i do) installed, as well as python 3.1 and the release-which-will-not-be-named (3.0) - if I install that same package into one of the other versions, a new binary would be written with the same name - a script-pythonversion might also be installed, but the fact that the original script was overwritten seems broken to me. I think the "best" fix for this is to make the bin/ directory mirror the lib layout - each version would get it's own bin directory: .local/ bin/ python2.6/ python3.1/ lib/ python2.6/ python3.1/ Of course, doing this begs the question - why have /bin and /lib be top-level directories, instead favoring a layout which looks like: .local/ python2.6/ bin/ lib/ The data and doc directories which some packages might include should follow the same convention, to avoid conflicts in those directories as well. The second behavior is more of a "man I wish for a unicorn" type of thing - I think that --user should be removed, and by removed, I mean made the default action when "python setup.py install" is invoked. Users should need to instead pass in a --global flag to alter the behavior to install into the system's site-packages and bin directories. The reason is simple - installation to the global site is typically a super-user task, and can side-effect all users, it's growing into more of a no-no as more OS vendors grow to rely on the packaged/included versions of python. .002 cents jesse