[Catalog-sig] Use user-specific site-packages by default?

[Lennart Regebro]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 9:11 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> The solution Nick proposed also has another issue: it would
> install packages meant for a virtualenv in the user's site
> packages dir (outside the virtualenv)... "If pip used the user
> site packages by default (when running as anyone other than
> root),..."

Well, I guess it would only bee when you don't have permission to
install packages in the python given. But even so, I have loads of
Pythons in /opt (every major version from 2.3 up) and they are not
writeable by me, just because I don't want to install packages by
mistake, I don't think installing to  site-packages by default in such
a situation makes sense either.

But then again, I'm not the target group for this sort of change. :-)

> Looks like a slippery road if you try to make pip guess
> what the right installation dir should be, e.g. by trying
> to detect that it's running in a virtualenv, the Python3
> venv, pyrun or a user's local Python installation.

Right. Refuse the temptation to guess.

//Lennart