[Bug 476005] Re: PYTHONUSERBASE should not affect distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib and friends

[Rolf Leggewie]

Karmic has long since stopped to receive any updates. Marking the Karmic
task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".

** Changed in: python2.6 (Ubuntu Karmic)
       Status: Incomplete => Won't Fix

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Title:
  PYTHONUSERBASE should not affect distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib
  and friends

Status in Python:
  Invalid
Status in “python2.6” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “python2.6” source package in Lucid:
  Fix Released
Status in “python2.6” source package in Karmic:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: python2.6

  The PYTHONUSERBASE variable sets the base directory for the *user*
  site directory. This defaults to ~/.local, and sensible values for it
  will generally include $HOME. This is not very well documented, but
  see for example http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.6.html#pep-370-per-
  user-site-packages-directory . I like to set PYTHONUSERBASE=$HOME/lib
  in my ~/.profile for example, so any locally installed packages end up
  below ~/lib/python2.x, where I can conveniently grep through them and
  the like.

  The dist-packages vs site-packages logic ubuntu adds to distutils
  checks for the existence of this variable even if it is being asked
  for the *system* site-packages directory or one in some other
  explicitly set prefix. This does not make any sense.

  For example: a trivial setup.py I wrote for testing (with pretty much
  modules=['somefile.py'] in it) tries (and fails, I'm not root) to
  install into /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/ without
  PYTHONUSERBASE set and into /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/ with
  PYTHONUSERBASE=$HOME. This is completely bizarre: PYTHONUSERBASE is
  only used to modify the location for --user installs by vanilla
  python, it should not magically affect other packagedir lookups.

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Fri Nov  6 00:54:50 2009
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  Package: python2.6 2.6.4-0ubuntu1
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
  SourcePackage: python2.6
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

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