How to run python without including ~/.local/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages in its module search path

Question

I have some packages installed under my ~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ subdir, which was for use with system python (/usr/bin/python). Now I have just installed Anaconda python (which is also python 2.7, but minor version 11). The whole idea of Anaconda distro is to have a self-containing python environment, such that EVERY module resides within anaconda install tree.

But what annoys me is that for some reason I cannot disable inclusion of ~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ from sys.path although I did not have PYTHONPATH environment variable. Is it possible to run python executable (in this case, Anaconda's python executable) without having to implicitly add ~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ and the eggs underneath it in the python search path?

Why this problem? Unfortunately the ~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/easy-install.pth also contains a reference to /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages , which causes this system-wide dist-packages to still be searched for.

Answer 1

Well, there is a -s flag in python executable to disable searching the user site directory (`~/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages etc). That solves the problem above!