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4 Alternate Installation

Often, it is necessary or desirable to install modules to a location other than the standard location for third-party Python modules. For example, on a Unix system you might not have permission to write to the standard third-party module directory. Or you might wish to try out a module before making it a standard part of your local Python installation; this is especially true when upgrading a distribution already present: you want to make sure your existing base of scripts still works with the new version before actually upgrading.

The Distutils `install` command is designed to make installing module distributions to an alternate location simple and painless. The basic idea is that you supply a base directory for the installation, and the `install` command picks a set of directories (called an installation scheme) under this base directory in which to install files. The details differ across platforms, so read whichever of the following section applies to you.

Subsections

- 4.1 Alternate installation: Unix (the home scheme)
- 4.2 Alternate installation: Unix (the prefix scheme)
- 4.3 Alternate installation: Windows
- 4.4 Alternate installation: Mac OS