Ned Deily wrote:
> 
> Ned Deily <nad@acm.org> added the comment:
> 
> /etc is definitely not the right place to put files for OS X framework 
> builds; if necessary, an etc directory could be added under the 
> framework version directory as a sibling of bin and lib.  It's also very 
> un-OS X like to be putting things into ~/.python and ~/.local 
> directories; the usual place would be in somewhere ~/Library, possibly 
> ~/Library/Application Support/Python or ~/Library/Frameworks.  Keep in 
> mind that it's much more likely on OS X to not only have muitiple 
> versions of Python installed but also more than one instance of the 
> *same* version, for instance, on 10.6, an Apple-supplied 2.6.2 and a 
> python.org 2.6.4.  Some thought should be given to locations for the 
> files for Unix-style (non-framework) builds.
> 
> (Adding Ronald.)

I think there is a misunderstanding here: we're trying to find
places where distutils would look by default, not where it
would write files.

AFAIK, there is general agreement that when writing files,
Python should use the ~/.local/pythonX.X/ directory.

OTOH, searching for config files that the user creates and
puts in place is another story. Python and distutils only
need to be able to find these and the idea is to use platform
specific standard search paths for this, so that the user
can place those config files into places that feel right on
each platform.