I generally don’t bother to install Python modules. I use web2py, and just dump them in the modules folder and let it take care of the local imports. It just always seemed like the most straightforward way of doing things- never felt right about handling dependencies at a system-wide level, and never felt like messing with virtual envs.
On one of my other questions, the answerer said
Generally, the best practice for 3rd party modules is to install them
via pip or easy_install (preferably in a virtualenv), if they’re
available on PyPI, rather than copying them somewhere onto your
PYTHONPATH. … [because that] runs the install scripts hooks
necessary to install executable scripts, build C extensions, etc.,
that isn’t done by just copying in a module.
I don’t fully understand this. I always thought it was more of a preference, but is it true that it’s better practice to install 3rd party modules, and am I potentially causing problems by not doing that? Does using a framework like web2py make a difference?
It depends on the module and what you want to use it for. Some packages come with useful command line tools, which may only be available to you if you install them appropriately.
Conversely, if you’re writing code which is to be distributed to environments you don’t have much control over, you often have to keep a copy of the code locally within your project, as the target environment may not have the package… web projects often fall into this category, depending on your serving environment, of course.