Hi to all Debian Python-ers, I know that it is written policy (not as strong as DFSG, nor Debian policy but still a policy)
I know that it has been such way for a while by now and not too many
people raised concern to cause any action
I know that not too many of regular users are hurt
but I can't really comprehend
WHY Debian's installation of Python decided to diverge from a common
behavior on other distributions:
why in a hackish site.py those /usr/local paths are added?
what was the actual use-case they solved?
isn't it more natural for people installing smth under /usr/local to
adjust their PYTHONPATH env variable and be happy without
interfering with other users of the system they share, who do not want
to use what is under /usr/local?
why should I in my script to take care about infiltration of /usr/local
away from sys.path to prevent such interference mentioned above? or may
be there is a magic 'PYTHON_NO_LOCAL=1' environment variable which would
allow me to avoid such a pain on per-user basis?
why it was hardcoded in the distributed non-configuration site.py, which
I can't even "configure" to prevent such behavior without doing tricks
to prevent its automagic 'fix' on every upgrade?
I would suggest my idiosyncratic solution, which imho would remove some
"magic" and make things transparent and consistent:
1. remove /usr/local from site.py
2. for convenience of users who like to run smth with /usr/local in
mind, but hate to tune PYTHONPATH
provide pythonX.X-local wrapper which adds /usr/local/... paths to
PYTHONPATH prior to call to pythonX.X
provide alternatives for pythonX.X to choose between the two (native
pythonX.X and pythonX.X-local), with pure pythonX.X being default.
is there anyone else who feels similar way?
--
Yaroslav Halchenko
Research Assistant, Psychology Department, Rutgers-Newark
Student Ph.D. @ CS Dept. NJIT
Office: (973) 353-1412 | FWD: 82823 | Fax: (973) 353-1171
101 Warren Str, Smith Hall, Rm 4-105, Newark NJ 07102
WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik
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