[Fedora-packaging] Why do Fedora python packages install in site-packages?

Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com
Thu Dec 9 17:40:04 UTC 2010


On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 12:44:36PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> 
> I'm confused why Fedora Python packages get installed in
> /usr/lib/python*/site-packages/.
> 
> Looking at the upstream Python documentation[1] it seems this
> directory is reserved for packages installed by the local system
> administrator.  (Similar to the Perl distinction between
> INSTALLDIRS=vendor / INSTALLDIRS=site / INSTALLDIRS=core [2])
> 
I don't see where the distinction is being made between local system admin
and vendor in that document.  Could you give a better link or a search term?

Also, on an FHS compliant Linux system, the system administrator would not
use /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages anyway.  They'd use something like
/usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages.  We should, perhaps be arranging for
such a directory to be i nthe default path -- if so, probably just need
a bug opened against the python package.  (Although that will slow pyhton
down.... python will then have another directory that it has to search
through to find its modules.)

> Not directly relevant, but Debian reserves[3] site-packages for the
> system administrator, and puts Python packages in its own directory
> (/usr/lib/python*/dist-packages).
> 
> Is this a mistake or am I not understanding the distinction?
> 
You're not understanding the distinction but I'm not either...  If you read
their documentation again you'll see a few things:

Debian switches to dist-packages with python2.6; python2.5 and below
continues to use site-packages.

System admins are actually reserved directories in /usr/local; dist-packages
and site-packages has nothing to do with system admins in their guidelines
as this directory follows the same rule as the one for packagers (python2.6+
vs python2.5-)

In this setup, it seems like Debian is not putting anything in
site-packages.  Without more information, their use of dist-packages just
seems arbitrary and non-standard.

-Toshio
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