On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Bill Janssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:> My understanding is that if there is a system Python, you shouldn't > change it. Ever.Huge, big, honkin' +1 from me on that. Besides, for a system Python, you want your distribution to manage packages, not setuptools, otherwise you confuse -- and probably break -- your system.I find this discussion fascinating. I install new packages into my system Python all the time, with "/usr/bin/python setup.py install", and that includes setuptools. I've got PIL, ReportLab, Twisted, Xlib, appscript, docutils, email-4.0.1, fuse, PyLucene, medusa, mutagen, roman, setuptools, and SSL installed in the Leopard machine I'm writing from. They don't wind up in /System/Library/.../site-packages/, they wind up in /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/, which is sort of the right place, from an Apple point of view. I do this on lots of Macs -- I've got a regular posse of them at work. And I've never had any problems with it. I agree that there are some things I'd be very wary of installing into the system Python, like PyObjC, and Zope. Usually, I don't install anything which appears to already be there. BillBill is correct - using /usr/bin/python does install packages to /Library/... - this is sort of the right place because it still installs it to a "system path", where it can side-effect other users, but it is a "mostly correct" way for Apple framework installs.
/Library is system-wide, yes, but not system-reserved. /System/Library/ is system-wide and system reserved. Just like on most distros (LFS and some older distros excluded): /usr/ is system-wide and system-reserved. /usr/local/ is sytem-wide, but not system-reserved. Computer admins are supposed to install into /Library/ or /usr/local/.The only possible problem of installing new Python modules into /Library/ is if any system Python scripts that depend on exact versions of libraries shipped in /System/Library/, but were not crafted as to ignore /Library/. That can be problematic, and arguablly a bug in the script, but Apple does not tend to fix those bugs that quickly. (OS bugs is one area where Apple's traditional secrecy is a bad thing. More transparency in bug fixing can only be an improvement.)
_______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com