I am soliciting opinions about the "safety" of py-pip package management system. I am using Python primarily for scientific computing/prototyping. Many of standard scientific python modules in our ports tree are a bit outdated (trying to update some of those ports is on my todo list as I am sure it is on todo list of many people but busy schedule is another story).
Inspired by my recent experience with hs-cabal I decided to play with py-pip on one of 5.1 installations which I will update soon. Surprisingly or maybe not I was actually able to update most of my python modules with exception of scipy which fails with linker problem ld: cannot find -lpython2.7 How safe is really using py-pip as a Python package manager? Is it possible to reconfigure py-pip to behave like cabal which installs modules in my home directory rather than in /usr/local/bin? Best, Predrag