When is it necessary to add a folder to sys.path?

Question

In psycopg2's setup.py , there is the following line:

sys.path.insert(0, 'scripts')

The scripts folder is in the same directory as setup.py - why does it need to be added to sys.path ?

Answer 1

That's something quite normal, as it allows the module to import some additional required modules which may be missing from the system. Remember that this change of sys.path is only temporary, while the setup.py is running.