Initial value of sys.path

Paul Moore paul.moore at uk.origin-it.com
Mon Oct 30 06:07:04 EST 2000


On Sun, 29 Oct 2000 23:47:24 +0100, Mark Hammond
<MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>Paul Moore wrote:
>
>> The initial value for sys.path on WIndows is signiicantly different
>> from that on Unix. Specifically, there is no site-packages directory
>> on Windows.
>> 
>> This is clearly a deliberate decision (as far as I can see, it's
>> enshrined in site.py, where it depends on os.sep being '/', and in
>> distutils/command/install.py, where it is in the INSTALL_SCHEMES
>> dictionary.
>
>I believe the deliberate decision was simply to "leave windows alone". 
>It wasn't clear at the time how useful the site packages would truly 
>turn out to be, and Windows already had special registry support.
>
>I don't think anyone will argue against extending this support into 
>Windows, as long as it played well with the existing Windows specific 
>mechanisms.  But as has been stated in recent threads, this is OSS, so 
>your guess is as good as mine as to _when_ it will get fixed - probably 
>when someone with enough motivation cares enough.  Currently, that rules 
>me out ;-)  One day it may worry my employer, tho!

Hm. It seems to me to be a relatively simple change (just wait for me
to be proved wrong :-), and I care, so I'd be willing to look at
fixing this.

The question then arises, where do I submit patches to?

Paul.




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