On Feb 16, 2016, at 11:05 AM, Paul Wise wrote: >Side-note: does anyone know why Python puts packages in "dist-packages", >"site-packages" etc directories instead of just "packages" directories?
I don't remember exactly why we called it 'site-packages', but I believe it was an evolution from the earlier ni.py module, which was where dotted module paths first showed up in Python. According to the HISTORY file, site-packages showed up sometime between 1.5a3 and 1.5a4, which IIRC would have been around 2001, so after Pythonlabs split from CNRI. If you want to read a blast from the past, here's Guido's original essay on built-in package support added in Python 1.5, again derived from the optional ni.py in earlier versions. https://www.python.org/doc/essays/packages/ dist-packages was a later Debian compromise so as not to break from-source builds installed in /usr/local with the default `make install` target. I think that was probably around the time I joined Canonical but wasn't working on the Foundations team yet. I do remember Doko and I talking about it, and it seemed like 'dist-' was a good parallel to 'site-' (i.e. a place for the distribution to put things). Cheers, -Barry