[Pythonmac-SIG] newbie questions: import site failed and proper location of site-packages

[Hunt Culver]

I was trying to put my own .py modules in the site-packages folder but  
they were loading as expected, so I searched various threads and  
discovered there are many possible site-package directories on a Mac  
OS 10.5 system.

Then after more troubleshoot I discovered that import site was not  
working.

So I removed MacPython entirely and started over using the  
instructions for Python 2.5 for OS X  at
http://www.python.org/download/mac/

Using the traceback option as mentioned in a july 2005 thread this is  
a part of the diagnostics I got in terminal when I executed python -v.


'import site' failed; traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/site.py", line 417, in <module>
     main()
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/site.py", line 402, in main
     paths_in_sys = addsitepackages(paths_in_sys)
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/site.py", line 208, in addsitepackages
     addsitedir(sitedir, known_paths)
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/site.py", line 169, in addsitedir
     addpackage(sitedir, name, known_paths)
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/site.py", line 142, in addpackage
     if not dircase in known_paths and os.path.exists(dir):
   File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/ 
python2.5/posixpath.py", line 171, in exists
     st = os.stat(path)
TypeError: stat() argument 1 must be (encoded string without NULL  
bytes), not str


This is a new install, so any ideas what may be the cause and how to  
fix this?

And back to the original question;  which site-package directory works  
with MacPython 2.5?

Thanks,
Hunt