[Python-Dev] PEP: per user site-packages directory

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 04:42 PM 1/22/2008 +0100, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>I don't really understand what all this has to do with per user
>site-packages.
>
>Note that the motivation for having per user site-packages
>was to:
>
>  * address a common request by Python extension package users,
>
>  * get rid off the hackery done by setuptools in order
>    to provide this.

Setuptools doesn't do any hackery for per-user site-packages, 
although its documentation does explain how to set up such a thing if 
you want it:

http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#administrator-installation
http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#mac-os-x-user-installation

Meanwhile, note that having per-user site-packages directories 
doesn't eliminate the need to be able to have PYTHONPATH directories 
treated as "site" directories, which is hasn't been discussed at all.


>As such the PEP can also be seen as an effort to enable code
>cleanup *before* adding e.g. pkg_resources to the stdlib.

Code cleanup of what?  There's nothing in pkg_resources that would 
change for per-user site package directories, since pkg_resources 
doesn't do any installation work.