PEP 668: Marking Python base environments as "externally managed"

[steve.dower]

@pf_moore

After all, the sysconfig install path for stdlib isn’t exactly an install path, as you shouldn’t be installing to it. So what’s the point in having that key in sysconfig - the sys.path initialisation code doesn’t use it as far as I can tell.

To answer this: sysconfig reflects the paths that CPython uses (primarily in make install and getpath.c), rather than defining them. So changes to sysconfig will usually require changes elsewhere in order to be consistent, because there’s no single source of truth.