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Subject: Re: Understanding .pth in site-packages
From: Philip Semanchuk <philip@semanchuk.com>
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Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:18:38 -0400
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On Aug 27, 2011, at 12:56 PM, Josh English wrote:

> (This may be a shortened double post)
>=20
> I have a development version of a library in c:\dev\XmlDB\xmldb
>=20
> After testing the setup script I also have =
c:\python27\lib\site-packages\xmldb
>=20
> Now I'm continuing to develop it and simultaneously building an =
application with it.
>=20
> I thought I could plug into my site-packages directory a file called =
xmldb.pth with:
>=20
> c:\dev\XmlDB\xmldb
>=20
> which should redirect import statements to the development version of =
the library.
>=20
> This doesn't seem to work.


xmldb.pth should contain the directory that contains xmldb:
c:\dev\XmlDB

Examining sys.path at runtime probably would have helped you to debug =
the effect of your .pth file.

On another note, I don't know if the behavior of 'import xmldb' is =
defined when xmldb is present both as a directory in site-pacakges and =
also as a .pth file. You're essentially giving Python two choices from =
where to import xmldb, and I don't know which Python will choose. It may =
be arbitrary. I've looked for some sort of statement on this topic in =
the documentation, but haven't come across it yet.=20


> Is there a better way to redirect import statements without messing =
with the system path or the PYTHONPATH variable?

Personally I have never used PYTHONPATH.


Hope this helps
Philip