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From: Mats Wichmann <mats@wichmann.us>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: Re: Pip installs to unexpected place
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2025 19:31:07 -0600
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On 4/15/25 16:07, Grant Edwards via Python-list wrote:
> On 2025-04-15, Thomas Passin via Python-list <python-list@python.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Linux, at least, it's standard for pip to install into the user's
>> site-packages location if it's not invoked with admin privileges - even
>> without --user. Pip will emit a message saying so. Well, that used to be
>> true but nowadays Pip wants you to use the --break-system-packages flag
>> if you want to insist on installing into the system's Python install,
>> even if it's going to go into --user.
> 
> I've always been a little baffled by that message when installing with
> --user.  How can that possibly break system stuff?

Your user install dir is in your python path, so when you go to run an 
installed Python program which imports other packages, it might pick up 
the version you have in your user space rather than the system one it 
was tested with.  It's about a whole curated Python environment that the 
distro spends time validating - a different version picked up elsewhere 
*might* be fine. Or it might not. I think they've had enough "it's not" 
bug reports to have gotten quite prickly about the subject.