Why do I have both /usr/lib/python3 and /usr/lib/python3.8?

[Chris Green]

Anssi Saari <as at sci.fi> wrote:
> Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> writes:
> 
> > Why are there both /usr/lib/python3 and /usr/lib/python3.8 on my
> > x[ubuntu] system?
> 
> While it's more of an Ubuntu (or Debian) question better asked in some
> relevant Linux forum, in the end it's because some package managers
> decided to do that. You can use commands like these to see which
> packages put stuff in which directory:
> 
> dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3.8
> dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3
> 
> On my Debian system the corresponding output looks like this:
> 
> $ dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3.7
> python3.7, libpython3.7-minimal:amd64, python3-tk:amd64,
> libpython3.7-dev:amd64, libpython3.7-stdlib:amd64, libpython3.7:amd64,
> python3-distutils, python3-lib2to3: /usr/lib/python3.7
> 
> $ dpkg -S /usr/lib/python3          
> python3-scipy, python3-opengl, python3-statsmodels, iotop,
> python3-reportlab-accel:amd64, python3-magic, python3-pkg-resources,
> python3-kiwisolver, python3.7, python3-pandas-lib, python3-kerberos,
> python3-lz4, python3-renderpm:amd64, python3-numexpr,
> python3-cffi-backend, python3-crypto, python3-tables, python3-rencode,
> python3-gi, python3-dbus, devscripts, python3-gpg, python3-pyasn1,
> python3-py, python3-eyed3, pdfarranger, python3-pip, python3-virtualenv,
> xpra, python3-pandas, python3-pil:amd64, python3-requests,
> python3-urllib3, python3-psutil, python3-paramiko, python3-netifaces,
> python3-patsy, python3-gssapi, python3-sklearn, python3-cycler,
> python3-sip, python3-cairo:amd64, python3-six, python3-chardet,
> python3-nose, python3-debian, python3-wheel, python3-attr,
> python3-soupsieve, python3-bcrypt, python3-bs4, python3-sklearn-lib,
> python3-scour, python3-setuptools, python3-entrypoints,
> python3-gi-cairo, python3-cups, python3-keyrings.alt, python3-pluggy,
> python3-tz, python3-ifaddr, python3-joblib, python3-cvxopt,
> python3-secretstorage, python3-reportlab, python3-more-itertools,
> python3-keyring, python3-asn1crypto, python3-html5lib, python3-dns,
> python3-decorator, python3-dateutil, meson, python3-pexpect,
> python3-idna, python3-seaborn, lsb-release, python3-numpy,
> python3-brotli, python3-tables-lib, python3-lxml:amd64, python3-pytest,
> python3-simplejson, python3-nacl, python3-zeroconf, python3-xdg,
> python3-libvoikko, python3-gst-1.0, python3-pypdf2, python3-evdev,
> python3-matplotlib, python3-statsmodels-lib, python3-cryptography,
> python3-certifi, python3-atomicwrites, python3-pyparsing,
> python3-ptyprocess, python3-webencodings, piper, python3-uno,
> python3-apt, python3-setproctitle:amd64, hplip: /usr/lib/python3
> 
> So I'd say as a rule stuff relevant to the specific version of python
> goes in the specific version directory (i.e. /usr/lib/python3.8 in your
> case) and python software packages in general go in /usr/lib/python3.
> 
Yes, there are some oddities though, for example python3.7 seems to be
installed in both locations (python3.8 in my case).

-- 
Chris Green
·