On 21/03/2012 9:45 AM, R. David Murray wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:09:38 +1100, Mark Hammond<skippy.hamm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On 21/03/2012 5:50 AM, Merlijn van Deen wrote:
I asked a question about this on IRC, to which the response was that
there were two main reasons to install python in c:\pythonxy:
1 - issues due to spaces ('Program Files') or non-ascii characters in
the path ('Fișiere Program' on a Romanian windows). These issues are
supposed to be fixed by now (?).
2 - issues due to permissions - installing python / packages in
%programfiles% may require administrator rights.
Apart from personal preference (ie, I prefer the status quo here), the
second issue is a bit of a killer. Even an administrator can not write
to Program Files unless they are using an "elevated" process (ie,
explicitly use "Run as Administrator" and confirm the prompt.
This means that any installer wanting to write .py files into the Python
install must be elevated, and any Python process wanting to generate
.pyc files must also be elevated. So even if an installer does arrange
elevation, unless that installer also compiles all .pyc and .pyo files
at install time, Python would fail to generate the .pyc files on first
use. While Python will probably fail silently and still continue to
work, it will have a significant performance impact.
So windows requires admin privileges to install to Program Files, but
not to install to '/'? How novel. (You can perhaps tell that I'm
not a windoows user). My understanding, though, is that Python
does make a distinction between a system install of Python and
a per-user one, so I don't think your objection really applies.
I think it does. Consider I've installed Python as a "system install".
Now I want to install some other package - ideally that installer will
request elevation - all well and good - the .py files are installed.
However, next time I want to run Python, it will fail to generate the
.pyc files - even though I'm an administrator. I would need to
explicitly tell Python to execute "as administrator" (or run it from an
already elevated command-prompt) to have things work as expected. Thus,
the "usual" case would be that Python is unable to update any files in
its install directory.
If Python installed for a single user didn't install into Program Files
(which it probably couldn't do without an administrator providing
credentials anyway) then it wouldn't be a problem - but then we have
multiple possible default install locations, which sounds like more
trouble than it is worth...
That said, there is an open bug in the tracker about the insecurity
of a system install of python (exactly that the files are writable
by anyone). So that would have to be solved first. I'd say this
is definitely a separate issue from Van's discussion, and the *only*
reason one might want to tie them together at all is "well, we're
changing the directory layout anyway".
Agreed.
Mark
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