[Pythonmac-SIG] (no subject)

[konrad.hinsen@laposte.net]

Bob Ippolito writes: 

> Well, you might think that you have particularly good reasons to use  
> PYTHONPATH, but pth files can do the same thing in a more predictable  

My particularly good reason is that I set PYTHONPATH differently in 
different shell environments for testing purposes. Changing links and path 
files is a lot more work. 

> way.  Perhaps it should ignore PYTHONPATH, but why?  NOTHING else  does.  
> It targets every single python interpreter in the system, why  should this 
> be any different?

py2app makes a big effort to make the package independent of the particular 
system environment on which it runs. PYTHONPATH is part of the system 
environment. 

 From a more pragmatic point of view, I don't see how respecting PYTHONPATH 
could do anyone any good (except people who intentionally modify the 
behaviour of an installed package, but they usually know what they are 
doing), and it can do a lot of harm by executing different code than the 
packager intended. 

In the worst case, a system administrator sets PYTHONPATH for whatever 
reason, and the user who clicks on an application doesn't even know about 
it. He reports a crash to the developer who doesn't suspect anything either. 

Konrad.