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[Python-Dev] Why does Mac OS X python share site-packages with apple python?

Ned Deily nad at acm.org
Mon Mar 5 18:44:41 CET 2012 
In article <4F54C6C3.9040401 at netwok.org>,
 Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> wrote:
> Le 03/03/2012 22:57, Ned Deily a écrit :
> > The python.org OS X Pythons (and built-from-source framework builds) add 
> > the Apple-specific directory to the search path in order to allow 
> > sharing of installed third-party packages between the two.
> The interesting thing to me here is that Ned’s decision to allow sharing
> some installed distributions/packages on Mac OS X is (IIUC)
> diametrically opposed to the one made by Canonical developers when they
> invented the dist-packages directory for Debian and Ubuntu to prevent
> breaking the system Python by installing a distribution/package with a
> python.org/built-from-source Python installed under /usr/local.

Just to be clear, it wasn't my decision; this feature was added before I 
was a core developer.  In any case, this is the opposite case: the 
system Python is not affected by this feature.  It affects 
user-installed framework-build Pythons, such as those provided by 
python.org installers, allowing them to share distributions explicitly 
installed by the user with the system Pythons.  It also does not share 
3rd-party distributions included by Apple with the system Pythons.   I'm 
+0 on it myself.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org
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