PYTHONPATH on Linux

Question

I m novice in this  and I have started learning Python  but I have some questions that I m not be able to understand    What exactly is the PYTHONPATH  on Ubuntu   Is it a folder  Is Python provided by default on Ubuntu  or does it have to be installed explicitly  Where is the folder in which all modules are  I have a lot folders called python    If I wish a new module to work when I m programming  such as pyopengl  where should I go to introduce all the folders I ve got in the folder downloaded  Coming back from the PYTHONPATH issue  how do I configure the PYTHONPATH in order to start working on my new module

User · Answer

PYTHONPATH is an environment variable those content is added to the sys path where Python looks for modules  You can set it to whatever you like   However  do not mess with PYTHONPATH   More often than not  you are doing it wrong and it will only bring you trouble in the long run  For example  virtual environments could do strange things      I would suggest you learned how to package a Python module properly  maybe using this easy setup  If you are especially lazy  you could use cookiecutter to do all the hard work for you

User · Answer

1  PYTHONPATH is an environment variable which you can set to add additional directories where python will look for modules and packages   e g      make python look in the foo subdirectory of your home directory for   modules and packages  export PYTHONPATH   PYTHONPATH    HOME  foo    Here I use the sh syntax   For other shells  e g  csh tcsh   the syntax would be slightly different   To make it permanent  set the variable in your shell s init file  usually    bashrc     2  Ubuntu comes with python already installed   There may be reasons for installing other  independent  python versions  but I ve found that to be rarely necessary   3  The folder where your modules live is dependent on PYTHONPATH and where the directories were set up when python was installed   For the most part  the installed stuff you shouldn t care about where it lives -- Python knows where it is and it can find the modules   Sort of like issuing the command ls -- where does ls live    usr bin    bin   99  of the time  you don t need to care -- Just use ls and be happy that it lives somewhere on your PATH so the shell can find it   4  I m not sure I understand the question   3rd party modules usually come with install instructions   If you follow the instructions  python should be able to find the module and you shouldn t have to care about where it got installed   5  Configure PYTHONPATH to include the directory where your module resides and python will be able to find your module

User · Answer

PYTHONPATH is an environment variable Yes  see https   unix stackexchange com questions 24802 on-which-unix-distributions-is-python-installed-as-part-of-the-default-install   usr lib python2 7 on Ubuntu you shouldn t install packages manually   Instead  use pip   When a package isn t in pip  it usually has a setuptools setup script which will install the package into the proper location  see point 3   if you use pip or setuptools  then you don t need to set PYTHONPATH explicitly   If you look at the instructions for pyopengl  you ll see that they are consistent with points 4 and 5

[python] PYTHONPATH on Linux

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