~/pydistutils.cfg can break python24 install

[micktwomey@…]

When installing darwinports onto a new mac I encountered a problem with the python24 port. I would get the following error when starting up python:

totoro:~ mick$ sudo port install python24 ... totoro:~ mick$ python Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Python 2.4.3 (#1, Jul 10 2006, 11:28:23) [GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5250)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

Looking in /opt/local/lib/python2.4 the python libraries and modules were completely missing.

port contents python24 showed that the majority of the python install wound up in my ~/Library/Python/2.4. This lead me to suspect my ~/.pydistutils.cfg as the cause:

[easy_install] site_dirs = ~/Library/Python/2.4/site-packages script_dir = ~/Applications/bin

[install] install_lib = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/site-packages install_scripts = ~/Applications/bin

It appears this was overriding the distutils configuration during the python build.

Simply moving my .pydistutils.cfg out of the way and running "sudo port -f install python24" fixed the problem.

It would be good to ignore any pydistutils.cfg files during the port build.