[Python-Dev] PEP 250 - site-packages on Windows: (Was: [Distu tils] Package DB: strawman PEP)

[Moore, Paul]

From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal@lemburg.com]
> I don't have a site-packages dir in my installations. Could it be that
> you installed some distutils package which automagically created one 
> or that this change in Python 2.1.1 ?

I don't believe so. I have ActiveState Python - it's possible (although
unlikely, I would think) that that version creates site-packages specially.
It's vaguely possible (although unlikely) that I created the directory
manually - it was missing in one of the 2.1 betas, IIRC, but I thought it
reappeared in 2.1 final. In any case, the necessary changes to make sure
that directory exists should be in the Windows Installer package(s) for
Python. I guess that means somewhere in the Wise installer scripts - which I
don't have access to, nor would I know how to change.

It should just be a case of reinstating the behaviour in 2.0, if the
directory really has been lost in 2.1.

> This doesn't seem to do the trick: the Windows installer still installs
> the packages directly to \Python21.

This change should (as I said, it's untested) have ensured that "python
setup.py install" puts the module into site-packages. I don't know what the
installer code in bdist_wininst.py does, as it's a base64-encoded EXE, and I
don't have the sources - surely it uses the distutils sysconfig stuff to get
the value (it has no other way of knowing...)?

Paul.