[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008

[glyph at divmod.com]

On 05:53 pm, fdrake at acm.org wrote:
>On May 1, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
>>Interesting.  I'm of the opposite opinion.  I really don't want 
>>Python dictating to me what my home directory should look like (a  dot 
>>file doesn't count because so many tools conspire to hide it  from 
>>me).  I guess there's always $PYTHONUSERBASE, but I think I  will not 
>>be alone. ;)

>Using ~/.local/ for user-managed content doesn't seem right to me at 
>all, because it's hidden by default.

I don't understand your reason for saying this.  Terms like "user" and 
"manage" are somewhat vague.  What sort of experience are you hoping to 
provide what sort of user with this convention?  I hope my earlier 
explanations were clear as far as the types of users.

I believe that the management of ~/.local/ is a subtle question.  It 
will largely be "managed" by simply telling distutils to put files 
there; I hope, implicitly.  In my mind there are 2 types of users who 
will be "managing" it - newbies, who don't really know what's going on 
but want "cd mypackage-0.0.1; python setup.py install; python -c 'import 
mypackage'" (or perhaps even "easy_install mypackage") to work, and 
advanced users who want to be able to mix-and-match different versions 
of different packages.  Advanced users might already have a PYTHONPATH 
management (virtual python, virtualenv, combinator, ~/.bashrc hacks, a 
directory full of symlinks) that already works for them, or be 
comfortable with inspecting a hidden directory, so ~/.local isn't a 
problem for them (i.e. us); newbies don't want to see the directory 
until they already know what's going on.
>I'd be even happier if there were no default per-user location, but a 
>required configuration setting (in the existing distutils config 
>locations) in order to enable per-user installation.

If you're happier without this feature, then perhaps your tastes run 
counter to a useful implementation of it :).  Why wouldn't you want it, 
though?  PYTHONPATH still exists; you don't have to use it, personally.