[Python-Dev] pkgutil, pkg_resource and Python 3.0 name space packages

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:01 PM 1/7/2008 +0100, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>On 2008-01-07 14:57, Fred Drake wrote:
> > On Jan 7, 2008, at 7:48 AM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> >> Next, we add a per-user site-packages directory to the standard
> >> sys.path, and then we could get rid of most of the setuptools
> >> import and sys.path hackery, making it a lot cleaner.
> >
> >
> > PYTHONPATH already provides this functionality.  I see no need to
> > duplicate that.
>
>Agreed, but one of the main arguments for all the .pth file hackery in
>setuptools is that having to change PYTHONPATH in order to enable
>user installations of packages is too hard for the typical user.
>
>We could easily resolve that issue, if we add a per-user site-packages
>dir to sys.path in site.py (this is already done for Macs).

Actually, neither PYTHONPATH nor your proposal solve all of the 
problems that .pth files do.  To date, nobody has proposed any real 
substitute for them.