> "pip install as root" will need to continue to work and thus distros
> need to get a way to make sure that it doesn't corrupt the system
> installed packages

Excuse my ignorance, but does "as root" imply that there's no user site-packages directory at all?

I'm not imagining a solution that doesn't require *users* to change their commands, so if they're currently running "sudo pip install" because they need to, but we change it so they shouldn't, then I'm okay with them having to remove the "sudo". (At least for this discussion - we can evaluate transition plans separately.)

And yeah, patching sysconfig.py seems easier. But then, adding a file to the distro is even easier, and if it's easiest for Linux distros to do that via configure than to add a copy step into their build (which is how I'll do it for Windows distros that need it), then I'll leave that to others to decide/implement.