[Python-Dev] Python install layout and the PATH on win32 (Rationale part 1: Regularizing the layout)

[Jim J. Jewett]

In http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-March/117953.html
VanL wrote:

> Paul Moore wrote:

>> First of all, this difference is almost entirely *invisible*. Apart
>> from possibly setting PATH (once!) users should not be digging around
>> in the Python installation directory. Certainly on Windows, it is a
>> very unusual application that expects users to even care how the
>> application is laid out internally. And I suspect that is also true on
>> Unix and Mac.

>> Secondly, the layouts are not as similar as you claim here,

In fact, of the 8 builtin layout schemes, the only two that are
consistent are nt (which you propose to change) and os2.

Of the 64 possible values, there are 26 unique values.

So I suspect the right answer is just to make it easier for a
user to set those 8 values at installation time; in your case,
you can tell users what values to use when setting up their
virtual environment.  (And if you can't do that, then you can
add files to your own directories, and if you can't do that,
then you can add a post-install hook that renames your directories
or moves your files according to the installed values.)

> In fact, even the one change 
> of 'Scripts' to 'bin' everywhere would get 90% of my uses.

So is this something that you can control in your recommended
virtual environment?  Or at least something that you can do
with the same script that checks everything out of source
control and adds *something* to the path?

-jJ

-- 

If there are still threading problems with my replies, please 
email me with details, so that I can try to resolve them.  -jJ