[Bug 362570] Re: Python distutils installs into 'site-packages' instead of 'dist-packages' when a prefix is set

[Robert Bruce Park]

I am experiencing exactly what is described in comment #10 on Precise.
`setup.py install` is putting things into site-packages directory, and
then when I try to run the program it raises ImportError because
sys.path does not contain any variation of 'site-packages' whatsoever.

The workaround I've created is ugly beyond belief:
https://github.com/robru/gottengeography/commit/54f52fa0a3f97e22fb61e70bc0b5ec77c1a19015

The code all worked fine on Fedora without the above patch, so something
is pretty broken with Ubuntu's distutils that it's installing packages
to places where python can't even find them.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/362570

Title:
  Python distutils installs into 'site-packages' instead of 'dist-
  packages' when a prefix is set

Status in “python2.6” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: python2.6

  When running a setup.py script with distutils in Jaunty like this:

  $ python setup.py install

  modules get installed at '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages'.

  In contrast, when running

  $ python setup.py install --prefix=/usr/local

  modules get installed at '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages'.

  In the same way

  $ python setup.py install --prefix=/usr

  installs modules at '/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages'.

  The problem is that '/usr/[local/]lib/python2.6/site-packages' is not
  part of the default sys.path .

  Maybe this is intended but I would expect that specifying an install
  prefix like 'usr' or 'usr/local' still installs modules to a place
  which is in Python's default search path - it worked this way in
  Ubuntu <= 8.10 .

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: i386
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
  Package: python2.6 2.6.2~rc1-0ubuntu2
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: python2.6
  Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

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