site — Site-specific configuration hook

Source code: Lib/site.py

This module is automatically imported during initialization. The automatic import can be suppressed using the interpreter’s -S option.

Importing this module normally appends site-specific paths to the module search path and adds callables, including help() to the built-in namespace. However, Python startup option -S blocks this and this module can be safely imported with no automatic modifications to the module search path or additions to the builtins. To explicitly trigger the usual site-specific additions, call the main() function.

Changed in version 3.3: Importing the module used to trigger paths manipulation even when using -S.

It starts by constructing up to four directories from a head and a tail part. For the head part, it uses sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix; empty heads are skipped. For the tail part, it uses the empty string and then lib/site-packages (on Windows) or lib/pythonX.Y[t]/site-packages (on Unix and macOS). (The optional suffix “t” indicates the free threading build, and is appended if "t" is present in the sys.abiflags constant.) For each of the distinct head-tail combinations, it sees if it refers to an existing directory, and if so, adds it to sys.path and also inspects the newly added path for configuration files.

Changed in version 3.5: Support for the “site-python” directory has been removed.

Changed in version 3.13: On Unix, Free threading Python installations are identified by the “t” suffix in the version-specific directory name, such as lib/python3.13t/.

If a file named “pyvenv.cfg” exists one directory above sys.executable, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix are set to that directory and it is also checked for site-packages (sys.base_prefix and sys.base_exec_prefix will always be the “real” prefixes of the Python installation). If “pyvenv.cfg” (a bootstrap configuration file) contains the key “include-system-site-packages” set to anything other than “true” (case-insensitive), the system-level prefixes will not be searched for site-packages; otherwise they will.

A path configuration file is a file whose name has the form name.pth and exists in one of the four directories mentioned above; its contents are additional items (one per line) to be added to sys.path. Non-existing items are never added to sys.path, and no check is made that the item refers to a directory rather than a file. No item is added to sys.path more than once. Blank lines and lines beginning with # are skipped. Lines starting with import (followed by space or tab) are executed.

Note

An executable line in a .pth file is run at every Python startup, regardless of whether a particular module is actually going to be used. Its impact should thus be kept to a minimum. The primary intended purpose of executable lines is to make the corresponding module(s) importable (load 3rd-party import hooks, adjust PATH etc). Any other initialization is supposed to be done upon a module’s actual import, if and when it happens. Limiting a code chunk to a single line is a deliberate measure to discourage putting anything more complex here.

Changed in version 3.13: The .pth files are now decoded by UTF-8 at first and then by the locale encoding if it fails.

For example, suppose sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix are set to /usr/local. The Python X.Y library is then installed in /usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y. Suppose this has a subdirectory /usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages with three subsubdirectories, foo, bar and spam, and two path configuration files, foo.pth and bar.pth. Assume foo.pth contains the following:

# foo package configuration

foo
bar
bletch

and bar.pth contains:

# bar package configuration

bar

Then the following version-specific directories are added to sys.path, in this order:

/usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/bar
/usr/local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/foo

Note that bletch is omitted because it doesn’t exist; the bar directory precedes the foo directory because bar.pth comes alphabetically before foo.pth; and spam is omitted because it is not mentioned in either path configuration file.

sitecustomize

After these path manipulations, an attempt is made to import a module named sitecustomize, which can perform arbitrary site-specific customizations. It is typically created by a system administrator in the site-packages directory. If this import fails with an ImportError or its subclass exception, and the exception’s name attribute equals to 'sitecustomize', it is silently ignored. If Python is started without output streams available, as with pythonw.exe on Windows (which is used by default to start IDLE), attempted output from sitecustomize is ignored. Any other exception causes a silent and perhaps mysterious failure of the process.

usercustomize

After this, an attempt is made to import a module named usercustomize, which can perform arbitrary user-specific customizations, if ENABLE_USER_SITE is true. This file is intended to be created in the user site-packages directory (see below), which is part of sys.path unless disabled by -s. If this import fails with an ImportError or its subclass exception, and the exception’s name attribute equals to 'usercustomize', it is silently ignored.

Note that for some non-Unix systems, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix are empty, and the path manipulations are skipped; however the import of sitecustomize and usercustomize is still attempted.

Readline configuration

On systems that support readline, this module will also import and configure the rlcompleter module, if Python is started in interactive mode and without the -S option. The default behavior is enable tab-completion and to use ~/.python_history as the history save file. To disable it, delete (or override) the sys.__interactivehook__ attribute in your sitecustomize or usercustomize module or your PYTHONSTARTUP file.

Changed in version 3.4: Activation of rlcompleter and history was made automatic.

Module contents

site.PREFIXES

A list of prefixes for site-packages directories.

site.ENABLE_USER_SITE

Flag showing the status of the user site-packages directory. True means that it is enabled and was added to sys.path. False means that it was disabled by user request (with -s or PYTHONNOUSERSITE). None means it was disabled for security reasons (mismatch between user or group id and effective id) or by an administrator.

site.USER_SITE

Path to the user site-packages for the running Python. Can be None if getusersitepackages() hasn’t been called yet. Default value is ~/.local/lib/pythonX.Y[t]/site-packages for UNIX and non-framework macOS builds, ~/Library/Python/X.Y/lib/python/site-packages for macOS framework builds, and %APPDATA%\Python\PythonXY\site-packages on Windows. The optional “t” indicates the free-threaded build. This directory is a site directory, which means that .pth files in it will be processed.

site.USER_BASE

Path to the base directory for the user site-packages. Can be None if getuserbase() hasn’t been called yet. Default value is ~/.local for UNIX and macOS non-framework builds, ~/Library/Python/X.Y for macOS framework builds, and %APPDATA%\Python for Windows. This value is used to compute the installation directories for scripts, data files, Python modules, etc. for the user installation scheme. See also PYTHONUSERBASE.

site.main()

Adds all the standard site-specific directories to the module search path. This function is called automatically when this module is imported, unless the Python interpreter was started with the -S flag.

Changed in version 3.3: This function used to be called unconditionally.

site.addsitedir(sitedir, known_paths=None)

Add a directory to sys.path and process its .pth files. Typically used in sitecustomize or usercustomize (see above).

site.getsitepackages()

Return a list containing all global site-packages directories.

Added in version 3.2.

site.getuserbase()

Return the path of the user base directory, USER_BASE. If it is not initialized yet, this function will also set it, respecting PYTHONUSERBASE.

Added in version 3.2.

site.getusersitepackages()

Return the path of the user-specific site-packages directory, USER_SITE. If it is not initialized yet, this function will also set it, respecting USER_BASE. To determine if the user-specific site-packages was added to sys.path ENABLE_USER_SITE should be used.

Added in version 3.2.

Command Line Interface

The site module also provides a way to get the user directories from the command line:

$ python -m site --user-site
/home/user/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages

If it is called without arguments, it will print the contents of sys.path on the standard output, followed by the value of USER_BASE and whether the directory exists, then the same thing for USER_SITE, and finally the value of ENABLE_USER_SITE.

--user-base

Print the path to the user base directory.

--user-site

Print the path to the user site-packages directory.

If both options are given, user base and user site will be printed (always in this order), separated by os.pathsep.

If any option is given, the script will exit with one of these values: 0 if the user site-packages directory is enabled, 1 if it was disabled by the user, 2 if it is disabled for security reasons or by an administrator, and a value greater than 2 if there is an error.

See also