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