How do I find the location of my Python site-packages directory?

Question

How do I find the location of my site-packages directory?

Answer 1

Let's say you have installed the package 'django'. import it and type in dir(django). It will show you, all the functions and attributes with that module. Type in the python interpreter -

>>> import django
>>> dir(django)
['VERSION', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', 'get_version']
>>> print django.__path__
['/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/django']

You can do the same thing if you have installed mercurial.

This is for Snow Leopard. But I think it should work in general as well.

Answer 2

An additional note to the get_python_lib function mentioned already: on some platforms different directories are used for platform specific modules (eg: modules that require compilation). If you pass plat_specific=True to the function you get the site packages for platform specific packages.

Answer 3

A solution that:

• outside of virtualenv - provides the path of global site-packages,
• insidue a virtualenv - provides the virtualenv's site-packages

...is this one-liner:

python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print(get_python_lib())"

Formatted for readability (rather than use as a one-liner), that looks like the following:

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print(get_python_lib())

Source: an very old version of "How to Install Django" documentation (though this is useful to more than just Django installation)