Newbie Question: How to use a .pth file on a Macintosh

[Robbie]

Hello All,

Hopefully this is an easy question: I'd like to use a .pth file on my
Macintosh so that I can easily import modules that I've created in my
own working directory. I've created a file called Robbie.pth. It
includes a single line:
/Robbie/PythonWork

I can't seem to figure out where to put this file so that Python will
recognize it when I start it up. I know that the path is correct
because if I do the command sys.path.append('/Robbie/PythonWork') then
everything works as expected. I just don't want to have to execute
this command every time I start Python.

I've looked at what's in sys.path, and have tried putting the file in
various of the directories listed, to no avail. I've also tried
putting it in the same directory where IDLE is (/Applications/
MacPython 2.5) and that doesn't work either.

What am I missing?

FYI I'm running MaxOS 10.4.8 and Python 2.5,

Thank you in advance for the help.

-Robbie

[J Peyret]

Hmmm, for lack of a better response, here are some suggestions, based
on what I've seen on Windows+Linux.

#1 put the .pth in the site-packages directory (this is what I do on
Linux). I think Python considers it special and looks for pth.

you can probably get that directory from doing

import sys
for i in sys.path:
print i

#2 put the .pth in the directory where the python executable is
located (this is less messy on Windows than on Linux or OS X)

which python (run on the OS X terminal command shell) should give you
an idea of where that is.

#3 Another idea is to use the Finder to find _other_ *.pth files that
may exist and put yours in the same location.

Best of luck.

[martin.laloux]

you put your pth file in (same configuration:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/

[Ivan Illarionov]

Robbie wrote:

I can't seem to figure out where to put this file so that Python will
recognize it when I start it up.

You need to put this file in your site-packages directory.
To get the location of your site-packages directory, type in Python
interactive shell:

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print get_python_lib()

-- Ivan