[IPython-dev] Weird PYTHONPATH, etc. issue

[Fernando Perez]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 5:41 AM, Thomas Spura <tomspur at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> I never had a problem with this setup so far, unless you count the
> circumvention of the sysadmin a problem...
> I think it's easier to install anything I need in userspace _again_
> and you can be sure, that it's consistent and working, but a small
> overhead is added of course.

But is it possible with a virtualenv to benefit from system-wide
packages while overriding a few yourself, if the system-wide ones use
the underhanded setutpools behavior?

Because that's the problem that I've found to be hard to manage with
setuptools: wanting to keep the system-wide stuff but overlay a few
personally managed packages to override system ones.  When the system
ones use regular distutils, that's trivial to do.  But with setuptools
messing with sys.path at runtime, you end up with the conundrum David
is in...

Maybe virtualenvs are the solution, it's still unfortunate an entire
new system has to be devised to protect against setuptools
aggressively malicious behavior.

Cheers,

f