On 04.05.2021 22:58, Steve Dower wrote:
>> "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?

Why should there be no site-packages dir ? All non-core packages get
installed into site-packages (or a similar dir which holds such packages)
by distutils / setuptools.

However, distros usually split this up further into packages which are
managed by the distro packager and ones which are managed by distutils /
setuptools and this is why the install schemes need to be patched.

> 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.)

I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting.

For Docker, the instructions from the Dockerfile are run as root, so
there is no sudo involved. Whether you use sudo or not or how pip is
invoked is really not relevant for the discussion. The main point is
that the target of the installation is the system installation, not
a local user installation or a venv. That installation layout is what
sysconfig.py defines in the install schemes.

> 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.

You mean: put something like...

from _sysconfig_site import *
install_sysconfig_site()

at the end of sysconfig.py and then have distros add a
_sysconfig_site module ?

That would work as well, but details will have to be hashed out, since
this can be abused to hijack the system installation of Python (python
-S would have no effect on this). Patching sysconfig.py is definitely
safer.