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

[Alex Walters]

I would suggest throwing this to -ideas, rather than just keeping it in -dev
as there is a much wider community of users and usecases in -ideas.

... and -ideas will shoot it down because user installs are too useful.  It
is also my understanding that it is the desire of PyPA to eventually have
pip default to --user when run outside of a virtualenv (to mitigate people
running sudo pip).  Eliminating user installs would change the situation
from one where, with pip install --user, one can recoverably break their
system to one, with sudo pip install, one can un-recoverably break their
system.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Python-Dev [mailto:python-dev-bounces+tritium-
> list=sdamon.com at python.org] On Behalf Of Christian Heimes
> Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 12:06 PM
> To: python-dev at python.org
> Subject: [Python-Dev] Deprecate PEP 370 Per user site-packages directory?
> 
> 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. 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.
> 
> I propose to deprecate the feature and remove it in Python 4.0.
> 
> Regards,
> Christian
> 
> [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0370/
> 
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