How to find out the Python library installation path?

python setuptools library-path
user2539266 picture user2539266 · Jul 3, 2013 · Viewed 17.3k times · Source

For installing third-party Python packages I have used a setup.py script that uses setuptools.setup() to install a bunch of packages. After the installation I can find these packages on one machine under /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages and on another machine under /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages.

Now I want to write a Python script that finds out where the third-party packages have been installed. How can I do that?

1) sys.prefix=sys.exec_prefix is on both machines "/usr".

2) The python executable is on both machines /usr/bin/python.

3) distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib() is /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages ("local" is missing) on one machine and /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages on the other machine.

Answer

alejandro picture alejandro · Jul 3, 2013

If the packages have already been installed, you could just import them, and look into their __file__ property:

>>> import mymodule
>>> print mymodule.__file__
'/path/to/mymodule.py'

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