A confession: I find third party modules awkward in Python

One of my weaknesses is that with rare exceptions, I pretty much never use third party Python modules even when they'd make my life easier. I will sometimes use third party modules that are single files, but multi-file modules are generally too annoying (especially if they require compiling something).

The problem with third party modules is that installing and managing them is usually too much work, especially if they are large. You basically have four choices:

• hope that all of the operating systems that you want to use the module on have prebuilt packages (which are sufficiently modern) and you can persuade your system administrator to install it.

• if you are your system administrator, you can install the modules by hand (or by various Python packaging methods) in the system module area. This leads to sysadmin heartache and leaves you exposed if you ever find yourself wanting to use your program on a machine where you don't have this power.

• put the third party modules straight into your program's main source directory (presuming that you have one, and that your program is not a single Python file before you started depending on third-party modules).

• some module install schemes support an alternate installation location. If you take this option, you generally have to manually fiddle with sys.path in your programs to get them to find these modules (either directly or by setting various environment variables in wrapper scripts).

All of these approaches have aspects that annoy me. The friction they add is just enough that when I ask myself 'do I really need this module or is it just convenient', the answer usually is that it is just a convenience and I can live without it.

I'm aware that this is a personal twitch, and that a lot of people use the various install options happily. Probably they're more productive than me, too, because they're open to using convenient third party modules when they make sense. I did say this was a personal weakness.

Sidebar: how I'd like third party module installs to work

The basic answer is that I want to be able to configure a place (the root of a directory hierarch) for them to go, once, and then to have this place automatically added to the Python search path for everything I run so that my code can just do 'import <whatever>' without me having to do anything else.

I want this to happen without the need for environment variables or special cover scripts in front of the Python interpreter or whatever, because any of those requirements impose their own frictions. (For example, special environment variables make it annoying to run things from cron or other contexts where you don't have all of your environment automatically initialized for you.)