[Python-Dev] Python and the Linux Standard Base (LSB)

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 01:05 PM 11/28/2006 -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>On 11/28/06, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> > There's a related issue that may or may not be in scope for this
> > thread.  For distros like Gentoo or Ubuntu that rely heavily on their
> > own system Python for the OS to work properly, I'm quite loathe to
> > install Cheeseshop packages into the system site-packages.
>
>I wonder if would help if we were to add a vendor-packages directory
>where distros can put their own selection of 3rd party stuff they
>depend on, to be searched before site-packages, and a command-line
>switch that ignores site-package but still searches vendor-package.
>(-S would almost do it but probably suppresses too  much.)

They could also use -S and then explicitly insert the vendor-packages 
directory into sys.path at the beginning of their scripts.  And a .pth in 
site-packages could add vendor-packages at the *end* of sys.path, so that 
scripts not using -S would pick it up.

This would be backward compatible except for the vendor scripts that want 
to use this approach.