[Python-Dev] Deprecate PEP 370 Per user site-packages directory?

[Oleg Broytman]

On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 09:00:07PM +0100, Christian Heimes <christian at python.org> wrote:
> On 2018-01-13 20:08, Oleg Broytman wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 06:06:16PM +0100, Christian Heimes <christian at python.org> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> PEP 370 [1] was my first PEP that got accepted. I created it exactly one
> >> decade and two days ago for Python 2.6 and 3.0. Back then we didn't have
> >> virtual environment support in Python. Ian Bicking had just started to
> >> create the virtualenv project a couple of months earlier.
> >>
> >> Fast forward 10 years...
> >>
> >> Nowadays Python has venv in the standard library. The user-specific
> >> site-packages directory is no longer that useful.
> > 
> >    Can I disagree?
> > 
> >> I would even say it's
> >> causing more trouble than it's worth. For example it's common for system
> >> script to use "#!/usr/bin/python3" shebang without -s or -I option.
> > 
> >    System scripts are run under user root which seldom has user-specific
> > site-packages so why worry?
> 
> You'd be surprised how many tools and programs are using Python these
> days.

   Certainly not. I wrote or helped to write a lot of them myself. :-)

> You can easily break important user programs by installing a
> package with --user.

   Under root? Probably. Then don't do that -- or do not allow system
Python to import user-specific site-packages (i.e., distinguish system
Python from normal Python running under user root).
   But for a non-root user user-specific site-packages is quite a
convenient thing. Please don't remove it.

> Christian

Oleg.
-- 
     Oleg Broytman            http://phdru.name/            phd at phdru.name
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.