Concluding the install path debate

[Richard Laager]

On 01/05/2018 01:25 PM, Achim Gratz via devel wrote:
> I think waf cannot currently cope with a different prefix for
> Python and the rest of the installation, but it should maybe have a way
> to split that on request of the user

waf has options for that, and they work:
./waf configure --prefix=foo --pythondir=bar --pythonarchdir=bar

> the default should be to follow
> whatever has been given as the general prefix.

It does.

> If there is no usable
> Python at that prefix, complain and bail, ask the user to modify the
> environment accordingly and retry.

This would have false positives. The most common example is the default
of /usr/local on a distro that *does* include /usr/local in sys.path. If
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages does not exist yet, it will not
show up in sys.path, even though it will as soon as the directory is
created. This would cause your proposed test to fail. But if that test
did not exist, everything would work fine.

-- 
Richard