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Installing Python Modules

If you are installing a module source distribution using the Distutils, the instructions will tell you to use setup.py.

This will try to install the module in python's standard location.

• /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/ on OSX
• /usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages on other UNIX distributions

If you aren't an administrator you won't have permissions to perform this install. You should instead install in a directory for which you do have write permission; such as your home directory.

This will install into ~/python/lib/python<version>/site-packages. You can check your python version with

Currently on Linux (ix), this will install into ~/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages. In order for the python interpreter to find your module you need to add this directory to your PYTHONPATH environment variable. In the bash shell you can set that with the export command.

References

• Installing Python Modules