[Python-Dev] Remove site-packages?!? [was: [Distutils] PEP 376 - from pythonpkgmgr's point of view]

[M.-A. Lemburg]

James Y Knight wrote:
> On Jul 21, 2009, at 7:38 PM, David Lyon wrote:
>> When I go into python on ubuntu I see there is /usr/local/pythonX.X/lib/
>> site-packages and I'm wondering why the hubba setuptools/distutils
>> doesn't put packages there by default. That would solve a lot of
>> problems.
>>
>> Just leave /usr/lib/pythonX.X//lib/site-packages to the O/S.
> 
> Uh guys, I'm not sure if anyone here noticed, but Debian and Ubuntu have
> switched to install their distribution-supplied python libraries into:
> /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/lib/dist-packages
> and distutils by default will install into
> /usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/dist-packages
> 
> starting with python 2.6.
> 
> See:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/02/msg00431.html
> 
> Since that email says "Discussed this with Barry Warsaw and Martin v.
> Loewis", I'd assume this change would be more widely known in the
> distutils/python-dev community, but apparently not??

Debian has a long history of doing this different, so it's
not much of a surprise. They also apply such changes to
Python packages.

However, all of this is non-standard and will cause problems
with tools that rely on the standard site-packages/ location. Such
changes should be discouraged.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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