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by nicoco 1371 days ago
On my debian stable, if I want this behaviour I actually have to add `--user`.

But that's not the recommended way to install pypi packages you want to use, with debian at least. This may install dependencies that will break (for your user) some debian packages depending on other versions of said dependencies. The easy way to go is `pipx install west`.

EDIT: --user is not necessary anymore. I think this does not alter the validity of the rest of my comment.
2 comments
rcarmo 1371 days ago
Actually, you shouldn’t need to add that flag, AFAIK it’s been the default for a while for non-root users. But both Debian and Ubuntu tend to package their Pythons to rely on .deb packages and have been somewhat inconsistent over the years.

Does it try to install packages in your system paths and fails due to lack of permissions?

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nicoco 1371 days ago
You're right, --user seems the default behaviour, I did not realize that. Maybe because it's different in Fedora that I also use? Or maybe I was just plain wrong :)

Anyway, I think this does not change the fact that it's a bad idea to populate your ~/.local/lib with python libs, since it may break some python programs installed via apt for your user, or was that wrong too?

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rcarmo 1371 days ago
Well, I use Fedora since March (after a lot of Ubuntu) and I don't need --user. I'm on 36.

As to filling your lib with stuff, it depends. AFAICR the default is to search for things there first, because it is assumed the user environment takes precedence.

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PaulHoule 1371 days ago 

   pip —user
is suicide. You can be doing everything right, using venv’s, conda and all that, install one package in a user directory and blam! You just broke every Python you use because that package is installed in all your environments.

It’s a bad idea right up there with Linux distros having python2, python3, python3.1, puthon3.2, python3.3, …. They give up the ease of use of a command line application where you can tell people what to type for the mind numbing complexity of a GUI application where it takes a 1500 page book to explain how to do anything in Microsoft Word because now you can’t tell people what to type to run and install things.

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