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Re: Python Policy: Things to consider for Stretch



On Feb 16, 2016, at 11:54 AM, Paul Wise wrote:

>I always thought it strange to put site- in /usr/local since
>/usr/local already implies site/system-wide packages. Same for dist-
>since /usr already implies distribution packages.

For as long as I can remember, a from-source 'configure && make && make
install' always put Python in /usr/local by default.  I think it was pretty
much the defacto standard for non-vendor supplied software[*] back in the days
of IRIX, SunOS, and other early *nix OSes that Python was developed on.  So it
was therefore completely natural that you'd end up with a site-packages in
/usr/local.  It was only later that the /usr/local site-packages directory
ended up on a /usr pathed distro-provided Python, which of course led to the
previously discussed dist-packages, the location of which completely mirrors
site-packages.

>I find it weird that site- gets used in ~/ since they are clearly user
>packages not site/system-wide packages.

It's all just a big ball of cruft-on-cruft with backward compatibility
preventing most cullings.  Somewhere out there, the entire world financial
system probably still critically depends on a tiny bit of Python 1.3 that
nobody has anything but the .pyc files for any more. ;)

Cheers,
-Barry

[*] I can't even call it Free Software or Open Source because it predates
those terms.  I mean, I started out sharing split shar files on Usenet with my
UUCP address.  ObGOML.


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