On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:47:37 -0800, Ned Deily wrote: > In article > <camzyqrtxy3msmxtivue8apyx2zfag3dqp1un+fqwnaywnoa...@mail.gmail.com>, > Chris Rebert <c...@rebertia.com> wrote: >> You generally shouldn't mess with Mac OS X's system copies of Python. >> Typically, one installs a separate copy using MacPorts, Fink, or >> whatever, and uses that instead. > > I don't understand what you mean by "mess with". Certainly one should > not attempt alter standard library modules provided with the system > Python but adding additional packages is fully supported.
I read Chris as making a general comment that one should be cautious about making changes to the system copy of Python, advice that holds for all OSes not just OS-X. > Apple > conveniently provides a special directory in user-controlled space > (/Library/Python) as the default location for Distutils-based installs. > They even provide versions of easy_install for the system Pythons. Perhaps so, but it seems to have the permissions messed up, or some other problem, because the OP can't write to it. His error is: copying build/lib/urllib2_file.py -> /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages error: /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/urllib2_file.py: Permission denied I note also that Chris' final comment was: "In any case, you generally need to `sudo` when installing stuff system- wide." which is probably the solution the OP is looking for. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list