[Python-Dev] Python install layout and the PATH on win32

[Lindberg, Van]

On 3/16/2012 3:38 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 16 March 2012 00:12, Carl Meyer<carl at oddbird.net>  wrote:
>> Changing the directory name is in fact a new and different (and much
>> more invasive) special case, because distutils et al install scripts
>> there, and that directory name is part of the distutils install scheme.
>> Installers don't care where the Python binary is located, so moving it
>> in with the other scripts has very little impact.

This is very interesting, as it seems to argue against Mark's point. If 
moving the Python binary is not an issue here, then would this change 
make it any more/less of an issue?

> 1. The incompatibilities between platforms is precisely the problem
> that sysconfig is designed to solve, isn't it? So tools in Python will
> either use sysconfig (and be correct regardless of layout) or should
> be encouraged to change to use sysconfig (so they are
> layout-independent).

Right. I want to change the default layout in sysconfig.cfg.

> 2. The differences in layout between a installed Python, uninstalled
> builds and virtualenvs, on the same platform, are more annoying in
> practice than any cross-platform differences (at least for me). But
> again, these are known issues that can be dealt with easily enough
> (trivially via sysconfig from within Python).

These differences are a major pain for me - and it doesn't make sense 
that they should need to be worked around each and every time.

> If I were "tidying up", I would consider renaming Scripts to "bin" on
> Windows, and putting the Python executables in there (so there's only
> one directory to add to PATH, and it uses the common name "bin" rather
> than a name that implies that it doesn't contain exes). But that
> offers no practical benefit...

This is not a "we should be consistent" argument - I know that would 
never fly. I do cross-platform dev all the time (develop on Windows and 
Mac, deploy on Linux) and so this bites me *every single time* I want to 
get a consistent layout between these three. That could be because I 
want my deployment environment to match my development environment(s), 
it could be because I need to introspect the layout to find some data, 
or because I want to check in an entire environment into source control.

This is not purely aesthetics - this is an issue I deal with all the time.

Thanks,
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