Question

Is there an easy way to disable Python egg caching? We have the situation where a system account needs to run a python program which imports a module.

Since this is a non-login robot account, it does not have a home directory, and dies trying to create the directory /.python-eggs.

What’s the best way to fix this? Can I convert my eggs in site-files to something which will not be cached in .python-eggs?

Answer 1

The best way to fix it is by creating a directory where it can write it’s egg cache. You can specify the directory with the PYTHON_EGG_CACHE variable.

[edit]
And yes, you can convert your apps so they won’t need an egg-cache. If you install the python packages with easy_install you can use easy_install -Z so it won’t zip the eggs and it won’t need to extract them. You should be able to unzip the current eggs to make sure you won’t need them.

But personally I would just create the egg cache directory.