@AndrasDeak I see.

@AndrasDeak Of course apt and pip would use different trees. apt handles system installation. pip is for locally installed packages.

@AndrasDeak I don't see the relevance of virtualenv here. That's for ones personal work, right?

@AndrasDeak I can't remember what flags I've used with pip/pip3 in the past. I think I might have used --user. A search of history just shows pip install.

@FaheemMitha that's for whenever you want to isolate a python package environment.

@FaheemMitha pip install on its own should use system pip, which in turn should fail without sudo. Unless it's a pip in an active virtualenv.

@AndrasDeak Ok, but I don't think I want or need to do that here.

@AndrasDeak Even as user?

What do you mean "as user"?

@FaheemMitha my point is that unless you specifically want to affect system python, it's what you'd want

@AndrasDeak One runs pip as user, because it's a local install.

I don't know what system pip is.

@FaheemMitha local install as in python built somewhere in $HOME?

System stuff is handled by dpkg and apt.

exactly

$ which python3.8
/usr/bin/python3.8

that's system python

@AndrasDeak No, an installation which is not into the system directories. That is typically under /usr, as least for Linux.

@AndrasDeak Ok, I'm with you there.

Normally just pip will try to install into /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib or something

It can't do that without sudo

So when you just do pip install very_cool_package, you usually get an error due to lack of privileges

@AndrasDeak /usr/local/lib. That's local too. Sorry, I mean /usr not including local, I suppose.

OK, then localness is irrelevant

@AndrasDeak Ah, right. You can on Debian, if you add your user to the staff group.

@FaheemMitha huh, weird

I remember having this conversation before. Possibly with you. Though I think it might have been with @terdon.

That's equivalent to using sudo, right? Point being that it can step on the toes of system python, or so I've heard

@FaheemMitha maybe

@AndrasDeak What's equivalent to using sudo?

@AndrasDeak Just for clarity, /usr/local is considered local per the FHS. It's not my invention.

@FaheemMitha being in the staff group, being able to install into /usr/local

On Debian, /usr/local looks like

@AndrasDeak No.

OK

ls -lah /usr/local/
total 56K
drwxrwsr-x 14 root   staff 4.0K Nov 15  2019 .

I see root root everywhere...

@AndrasDeak sudo typically gives one the power of root. Though one can customize what you're allowed to do. But that always requires a password.

@FaheemMitha I know that... nevermind

Adding your user to a group might increase your privileges, or it might not. If that group is not already in use, it's irrelevant. So it's orthogonal to something like sudo.

$ ls -lah /usr/local/
total 40K
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4.0K Dec 15  2019 .

@AndrasDeak Oh. What distribution is that?

If it weren't debian it would hardly be news-worthy, would it? :P

$ uname -a
Linux laptop 5.9.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.9.9-1 (2020-11-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

@AndrasDeak Oh, it's Debian. Huh. Maybe it's left over from a previous version.

@FaheemMitha only on a subset of Debian installations; new Debian 10 or later installations have /usr/local owned by root:root

Maybe Debian doesn't do that any longer.

@StephenKitt Oh, they changed that, did they?

@FaheemMitha yes

@AndrasDeak When was your original installation done?

@StephenKitt No doubt there was a lengthy thread on debian-devel.

I like that feature, personally. Is it possible to reenable it, or would I have to do it manually?

And what was the rationale for changing it? Some security issue?

@AndrasDeak "laptop" isn't a very imaginative name for a computer.

@FaheemMitha I doctored the output of uname because the real name is irrelevant

@AndrasDeak Ah.

@FaheemMitha see bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=299007 for the rationale

@FaheemMitha late 2019

@AndrasDeak Ok, so that explains it.

@FaheemMitha yes, see debian.org/doc/debian-policy/…

@StephenKitt Thank you.

@StephenKitt Thank you again.

My system still has /usr/src owned by root:src which I find more useful than /usr/local owned by root:staff.

@StephenKitt If it's a security hole, I'm surprised it was the default for so long.

@StephenKitt That's not the case by default, I think. Did you change it?

@FaheemMitha it used to be the default.

@StephenKitt Oh. When did it change? My system (originally installed in 2013, I think) doesn't have that.

@FaheemMitha Debian 5

@StephenKitt Your install goes back to Debian 5? Debian 5.0 (Lenny), released 14 February 2009.

@FaheemMitha the default changed in Debian 5, so my install is older than that (Debian 2.0)

Stephen's Debian install is probably older than some users on the site...

@JeffSchaller My .emacs and .bashrc files are most certainly older than some users.

@terdon did you ever compile emacs ? perl ?

No!

Well, unless Arch did when I installed it, but emacs should have been available as a binary so probably not.

part of my job was to compile emacs and X11

that was last century of course

ouch... fun times :)

@StephenKitt Ah, that's certainly old.

But AMD64 wasn't available for 2.0, was it?

@Archemar I've compiled Emacs, I think. When backporting.

I don't think I've ever compiled Perl. Not much point in trying to backport that.

first time I saw perl was shar file in newsgroup ...

I never bother to compile it, I use awk whenever I feel for esoteric programming

@Archemar on net.sources? ;-)

@Archemar Ooh, the nostalgia.

@terdon BTW, I wasn't aware you were a DWJ fan.

Going by

Oh yes, I loved those books as a kid!

@terdon I did too. Charmed Life, at least.

Yes!

I read the others later, I think.

The other Chrestomanci books, that is.

I read some of her books that were published in the 1970s while I was a child in India.

The others I read later.

can you not do not equals within arithmetic operations?

I guess you can but it's backwards

@jesse_b = is assignment -- if ((a=42)); then echo The Answer;fi, while == is comparison

!= seems to work ish

wait maybe I'm just being dumb as usual

sometimes you just need a rubber duck

My son loves ducks

And ducks love the sun. What goes around, comes around.

ducks

terdon just ducked

goose

guess we're back to monkeys