Bug 111438

Summary:	PEP 273 changes sys.path[1] value
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Component:	python	Assignee:	Mihai Ibanescu <mihai.ibanescu>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	1	CC:	nobody+pnasrat
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OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2004-04-05 20:38:37 UTC	Type:	---
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Description Jeff Johnson 2003-12-03 18:06:41 UTC

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Description of problem:
PEP 273 has put /usr/lib/python23.zip in sys.path[1],
apparently to improve linear search behavior when loading
modules.

sys.path[1] used to be a reasonable way to find the
preffered installation location in spite of multilib
paths and such. This is/was a useful convention imho.

PEP 273 concerns regarding linear search behavior are better
addressed by, say, hashing all the available modules once.
Hashing module paths would seem to be easier to enforce
policies like "Prefer zipped before *.pyc before *.py"
with only small loss of dynamic lookup if, say, module
trees were changing underneath running executable that
had already hashed paths. There are obvious timestamp
checks that establish lookaside hashed path consistency
if that degree of dynamic lookup is a MUSTHAVE.

But I digress ...

Any chance of reverting to the previous convention, i.e.
sys.path[1] contains the "preferred" module installation
lpath?

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Didn't try


Additional info:

Comment 1 Mihai Ibanescu 2003-12-03 18:26:37 UTC

There are other ways to look at the installation location:

python -c "from distutils import sysconfig; print
sysconfig.get_config_var('LIBDEST')"

(you'll need python-devel though, unless I move
/usr/lib/python2.3/config/Makefile into python, which would be
possible too since distutils would break otherwise).

Comment 2 Mihai Ibanescu 2003-12-03 18:35:21 UTC

Here's something else that can happen:

PYTHONPATH=afdadfasdfadf python -c "import sys; print sys.path"
['', 'afdadfasdfadf', '/usr/lib/python1.5/',
'/usr/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386', '/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-tk',
'/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload', '/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages']

This is on python 1.5. PYTHONPATH is documented and it will munge
sys.path; I think relying on sys.path is bogus in the first place.

Comment 3 Paul Nasrat 2003-12-03 22:11:31 UTC

Indeed according to Gustavo sys.prefix is what should be being looked
at here:

python -c "import sys; print '%s/lib/python%s\n' %
(sys.prefix,sys.version[:3])"

not quite as terse but probably more portable

Comment 4 Paul Nasrat 2003-12-04 11:47:27 UTC

The above isn't multilib clean as it's hard coded lib, looks like the fragment in comment #1 is probably best for rpm-python as it buildrequires python-devel anyway.

Comment 5 Mihai Ibanescu 2004-04-05 20:38:37 UTC

Closing