Installation | Topics | Beyond Lino

The Python Path

A collection of things to know when setting up the PYTHONPATH or diagnosing related problems.

What is the Python Path?

PYTHONPATH

It is an environment variable used by Python itself. It defines the places from where to import Python modules. See PYTHONPATH

Here is how to see your PYTHONPATH:

$ python -c 'import sys; print sys.path'

The mypy directory

Ac ommon practice is to create directory ~/mypy (or C:\mypy under Windows) where you hold your local Python projects. You may choose some other location, but it should be a name without spaces and non-ascii characters.

Then you add this directory to your Python Path by saying in your .bashrc (or whatever login script you use):

export PYTHONPATH = /home/mypy

(Under Windows you click around to find the place where you can define environment variables and define an environment variable PYTHONPATH with the value C:\\mypy).

The result is that any Python script in or below this directory is now available as an importable Python module.

For example if you create a file ~/mypy/foo.py with the following content…

def hello():
    print "Hello, world!"

… then you can import a module foo from any Python process, independently of the current directory:

$ python
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Nov 27 2010, 18:30:46) ...
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>\ >> import foo
>\ >> foo.hello()
Hello, world!
>\ >> from foo import hello
>\ >> hello()
Hello, world!
>\ >>

The local.pth file

In your mypy directory, create a file local.pth, a plain txt file that contains a list of directories which Python should also add to its path.

Under Debian, this file should look like this:

~/snapshots/lino
~/snapshots/django-dev
~/snapshots/appy

Under Windows it should have the following content:

c:\snapshots\lino
c:\snapshots\python-dateutil
c:\snapshots\appy
c:\snapshots\Cheetah-2.4.4
c:\snapshots\PyYAML-3.10\lib

Set the system-wide Python Path

The following approach can be useful if you want to provide system users with a development version of Django or some other Python package. It requires you to have root permission.

To modify the system-wide Python Path, add the file local.pth to a directory that’s already on your Python Path:

OS

Recommended directory

Debian Lenny

/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages

Debian Squeeze

/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages

Debian Wheezy

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages