How do I find the location of my Python site-packages directory?

Question

How do I find the location of my site-packages directory?

Answer 1

The native system packages installed with python installation in Debian based systems can be found at :

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/

In OSX - /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages

by using this small code :

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
print get_python_lib()

However, the list of packages installed via pip can be found at :

/usr/local/bin/

Or one can simply write the following command to list all paths where python packages are.

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages']

Note: the location might vary based on your OS, like in OSX

>>> import site; site.getsitepackages()
['/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages', '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/site-python', '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages']