How do I change the default directory that pip installs to?

Question

When I run the commmand

pip install virtualenv

I get:

Installing virtualenv script to /usr/local/share/python

Answer 1

If you want to manually decide where you want packages to reside, you could always download the source distribution to a directory of your choice with the following:

pip install -d <path_to_my_directory>

But when you install, I think you probably want to put the executable console scripts (as defined in the package's setup.py file; like virtualenv for example) in a directory included in your $PATH environmental variable.

You can specify this manually by doing the following:

sudo python setup.py install --install-scripts /usr/bin/

orsudo python setup.py install --install-scripts /usr/local/bin/

Let me know if you have any other questions...

Answer 2

/usr/local/bin is for executable programs. /usr/local/share is to store data that is independent of the architecture.

So, in your case, you are installing by default in /usr/local, where the executable programs live in /usr/local/bin, the arquitecture-independent data lives in /usr/local/share, configuration files live in /usr/local/etc, etc.

You can check Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard to get an overview on the topic.