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

[Nick Coghlan]

On 14 January 2018 at 03:06, 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. 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.

Given that we're working towards making user site-packages the default
install location in pip, removing that feature at the interpreter
level would be rather counterproductive :)

Virtual environments are a useful tool if you're a professional
developer, but for a lot of folks just doing ad hoc personal
scripting, they're more complexity than is needed, and the simple "my
packages" vs "the system's package" split is a better option. (It's
also rather useful for bootstrapping tools like "pipsi" - "pip install
--user pipsi", then "pipsi install" the other commands you want access
to).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia