How to add to beginning Python path in bash

Question

Here is my .bash_profile

PYTHONPATH=".:/home/miki725/django/django:$PYTHONPATH"
export PYTHONPATH

So then I open python however the directory I add in .bash_profile is not the first one:

Python 2.4.3 (#1, Sep 21 2011, 20:06:00) 
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-51)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> for i in sys.path:
...     print i
... 

/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c9-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/flup-1.0.2-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/MySQL_python-1.2.3c1-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_form_utils-0.1.7-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mechanize-0.2.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mercurial-1.6-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/lxml-2.2.7-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_registration-0.7-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/sorl_thumbnail-3.2.5-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/South-0.7.2-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_keyedcache-1.4_1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_livesettings-1.4_3-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_app_plugins-0.1.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_signals_ahoy-0.1_2-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pycrypto-2.3-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django_threaded_multihost-1.4_0-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/PIL-1.1.7-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyOpenSSL-0.11-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ZSI-2.0_rc3-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/PyXML-0.8.4-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pyquery-0.6.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pip-1.0.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtualenv-1.6.1-py2.4.egg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/simplejson-2.1.6-py2.4-linux-i686.egg
/home/miki725
/home/miki725/django/django
/usr/lib/python24.zip
/usr/lib/python2.4
/usr/lib/python2.4/plat-linux2
/usr/lib/python2.4/lib-tk
/usr/lib/python2.4/lib-dynload
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Numeric
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/PIL
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/gtk-2.0
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> import django
>>> django.__file__
'/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.4.egg/django/__init__.pyc'
>>> 

How can I add to a python path in .bash_profile so it would be in the beginning. This is for shared hosting. I need to be able to import my django install instead of using system default.

Thank you

Answer 1

Your best bet is to modify sys.path at runtime. In a shared hosting enviroment it's common to do this in your .wsgi file. You could do something like this:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/home/miki725/django/django')

If you add export PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/miki725/.pythonrc to your .bash_profile, you can add that your .pythonrc file, and it'll be executed before an interactive prompt is shown as well.

Answer 2

As an alternative approach, you could modify sys.path directly from the interpreter:

sys.path.insert(0,"/home/miki725/django/django")

Answer 3

I'd say that your PYTHONPATH is being modified when the site module is imported. Please have a look at the user module to provide user-specific configuration (basically just prepend the directories you're interested in to sys.path).

Note: user module is currently deprecated, but for python 2.4 this should work.

Edit: Just for completeness, for python >= 2.6 (user module deprecated), you should create a usercustomize.py file in your local site-packages directory as explained here.

Answer 4

As indicated by others, you modify the sys.path directly in Python like this:

sys.path.insert(0,"/home/miki725/django/django")

But I think that virtualenv is the solution you are looking for. This tool allows you to create isolated Python environments.