On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:51 AM, Fred Drake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Aug 19, 2008, at 3:45 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> I *thought* (relative Mac newbie), the standard advice was that if you >> want to install extension modules then you should install your own version >> of Python and not mess with the system version. > > My understanding is that if there is a system Python, you shouldn't change > it. Ever. > > System Python's are for other components of the system; you can use them, > but shouldn't modify them. Including installing or updating packages in the > site-packages directory. > > At Zope Corporation, we use a clean Python for all development and > deployments. Nothing gets installed into the site-packages, because > different applications want different packages (or different versions), and > we want to deploy with what we test with. > >> Meaning that you have to maintain two Python installs - something that >> hasn't been a problem for me yet. So even if Mac OS ships with Python 2.6, >> many users will still want to install their own version. > > Indeed. I've never had to do anything to maintain the system Python on Mac > OS X. It's there, Mac OS X does what it will with it, and I use my private > (and squeaky clean!) Python installations. > > > -Fred > > -- > Fred Drake <fdrake at acm.org>
Just to add to this - with the advent of PEP 370[1], we now have the ability to use per-user site-packages directories. This neatly sidesteps the problem (for the most part) of tainting the system installations of python directly. As for the Mac issue - as a mac user/developer - I only install "big ticket" packages into the system path - for everything else, I either use virtualenv.py, a custom python install or the PYTHONPATH overrides. I've personally *never* used a python distribution from macports or fink - if I need a custom build, I'll do it myself, rather than install something into the /opt/ tree macports uses - I've had too many issues with library/binary conflicts with the pre-installed libraries/tools from twiddling with PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to add the /opt tree to my environment in order to get compiles/tools to play nice. -Jesse [1] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0370/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com