Subject: Re: [bug#64573] [PATCH 0/3] guix: build: python-build-system: Have applications by default ignore non-Guix libraries in user site dir

From: Lars-Dominik Braun <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 11:41:48 +0200

Hi,

> I think it would need to be set to True, not False, to have the desired
> effect on Guix-installed pip application.

to clarify, the comment in site.py says

	set it to False to disable the feature or True to force the feature

and my impression was that we want to disable the user site dir by default
(i.e. disable the feature), right?

> However, we want our change to only affect applications installed with
> Guix. So that the user could theoretically still do e.g.
> 
>     python3 -m pip install --ignore-installed pip
>     ~/.local/bin/pip install xmldiff
> 
> Rn I don't see a better way to achieve this than patching
> python-build-system and applications like pip.

I can still `python3 -m pip install` with the explicit `--user`
switch, even when the user site dir is disabled globally via
ENABLE_USER_SITE=False. The only thing that changes is the default
search path. So that library will only be available if I explicitly add
.local/lib/pythonX/site-packages to PYTHONPATH.

Shouldn’t that also solve the original issue of Guix-installed
applications picking up random libraries from the user site dir.

Cheers,
Lars