[Python-Dev] request for comments - standardization of python's purelib and platlib

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Brett Cannon<brett at python.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 11:23, Jan Matejek <jan.matejek at novell.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm cross-posting this to distributions at freedesktop and python-dev,
>> because the topic is relevant to both groups and should be solved in
>> cooperation.
>>
>> The issue:
>>
>> In Python's default configuration (on linux), both purelib (location for
>> pure python modules) and platlib (location for platform-dependent binary
>> extensions) point to $prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages.
>> That is no good for two main reasons.
>>
>> One, python depends on the "lib" directory. (from distro's point of
>> view, prefix is /usr, so let's talk /usr/lib) Due to this, it's
>> impossible to install python under /usr/lib64 without heavy patching.
>> Repeated attempts to bring python developers to acknowledge and rectify
>> the situation have all failed (common argument here is "that would mean
>> redesign of distutils and huge parts of whatnot").
>
> This is now Tarek's call, so this may or may not have changed in terms of
> what the (now) distutils maintainer thinks.
>

I don't recall those repeated attempts , but I've been around for less
than two years.

You are very welcome to come in the Distutils-SIG ML to discuss these matters.
I'm moving the discussion there.

Among the proposals you have detailed, the sharedir way seems like the
most simple/interesting
one (depending on you answer to Brett's question )


Regards
Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org