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On Aug 19, 2008, at 1:28 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:
My understanding is that if there is a system Python, you shouldn't
change it. Ever.
Huge, big, honkin' +1 from me on that. Besides, for a system Python,
you want your distribution to manage packages, not setuptools,
otherwise you confuse -- and probably break -- your system.
I find this discussion fascinating. I install new packages into my
system Python all the time, with "/usr/bin/python setup.py install",
and that includes setuptools. I've got PIL, ReportLab, Twisted, Xlib,
appscript, docutils, email-4.0.1, fuse, PyLucene, medusa, mutagen,
roman, setuptools, and SSL installed in the Leopard machine I'm
writing from. They don't wind up in
/System/Library/.../site-packages/, they wind up in
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/, which is sort of the right place,
from an Apple point of view. I do this on lots of Macs -- I've got a
regular posse of them at work. And I've never had any problems with
it.
I agree that there are some things I'd be very wary of installing into
the system Python, like PyObjC, and Zope. Usually, I don't install
anything which appears to already be there.
It probably affects OS X and Windows less than Linux distros like
Gentoo or Ubuntu because the former don't heavily rely on the system
python for their basic operation. You can pretty royally screw up
the latter if your Python environment isn't just right.
I think it's a /good/ thing that some OS distros are heavily invested
in Python for their core operation. We just need to understand the
best practices when they are.
- -Barry
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