[Python-Dev] Multiple levels of site-packages
Ronald Oussoren
oussoren at cistron.nl
Wed Aug 6 21:09:17 EDT 2003
Hi,
This issue first surfaced on the MacOS SIG list, but seems to be a more
cross-platform issue.
The Python distribution, and distutils, knows of two types of
packages/modules: those in the core distribution and the site-packages.
This is fine when Python is locally installed anyway, but now that
Python is distributed as part of the OS on some systems (e.g. Linux and
MacOS X) there seem to be more levels at which you can install
packages: between the core python packages and locally installed
site-packages are packages installed by the system vendor. As Jack
noticed on the MacOS Sig list there are actually even more levels of
packages:
1) part of the python core
2) part of the system vendor packages
3) locally installed network-wide packages
4) locally installed system-wide packages
5) locally installed user packages
Items 2 to 5 are currently lumped together in site-packages. IMO it
would be usefull to define a mechanism to define these levels of
package collections, and to teach distutils about them. This would make
it easier for system vendors to keep the packages provided by the
system seperate from locally installed packages.
A related issue is that the site-packages is usually stored in the same
part of the OS tree as the python executable, e.g. /usr/lib/python2.3
if the executable is in /usr/bin. This means that local python packages
will be installed into "os vendor space" when python is part of the
system software. I think it would be prudent to define a policy on how
system vendors should deal with this.
The Apple distribution of Python 2.3 in Panther solves this problem by
moving site-packages to "system admin" space using a symlink. This is a
less then perfect option because some Apple provided python packages
are in the site-packages directory, and therefore in "system admin"
space.
Is this really a problem worth writing a PEP for, or am I seeing ghosts?
Ronald
P.S. As this is my first post to python-dev, I'd better introduce
myself :-). My claim to fame is PyObjC, the bridge between Python and
Cocoa on MacOS X. I've been a (happy) Python user from about release
1.2 (mostly on various Unix flavors and returning to the Mac with MacOS
X)
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