[Zope3-dev] Re: Zope 3.0, and why I won't use it

[Tim Peters]

[Max M]
> ...
> I wonder if there is a reason that it ends up in site-packages instead
> of in its own seperate directory?

site-packages is always on sys.path.  Indeed, that's why site-packages
exists:  so that 3rd-party packages *have* a place to get installed
that Python can find.  Put code somewhere else, and then every way of
invoking the code has to arrange to mutate sys.path, and then too
multiple packages from different sources mutating sys.path can
interfere with each other.

For example, the Zope2 Windows installer ships with its own Python,
and with its own win32all.  It has to mangle sys.path all over the
place to get any of this to work.  But if the user *also* installed
win32all, it turns out their installation of win32all mangles sys.path
too, and in such a way that it can hide the version of win32all Zope2
is trying its hardest to supply -- it can even mange to hide Zope2
packages that have nothing to do with win32all.