[Python-Dev] PEP 250 - site-packages on Windows: (Was: [Distu tils] Package DB: strawman PEP)

[Moore, Paul]

From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal@lemburg.com]
> They should be in the CVS tree of Python on SourceForge.
I don't have CVS access, so I can't get at these, unfortunately...
 
> About the change: I think distutils should lookup the path in Python's
> site.py file - that way you assure that distutils will work on all
> Python installations rather than only on those which have the site.py
> patch. Otherwise, Python won't find the packages installed in 
> Lib/site-packages.

I'm not sure what you intend, here. site.py doesn't export this directory -
it is just one of the directories which gets added to sys.path in site.py.
On Unix, there are more than one such directory (both version-specific and
version-independent), so there isn't, in general, just one such directory. I
don't know how you could encapsulate this in a way which would not clash
with other platforms' policies.

The intention of this change was to be the smallest possible change which
would work. I believe it (or at least, the patch I sent when I submitted the
final version of the PEP) does that for everything except the Windows
Installer. I'll have to defer judgement on how best to address that area to
others better qualified to comment, but see my message to Thomas for my
suggestion.

Hope this helps,
Paul.