A few years ago I wrote a tool to do exactly this [1], which also works for any executable/library, not just Python code. It works by compiling the code with a

A few years ago I wrote a tool to do exactly this [1], which also works for any executable/library, not just Python code. It works by compiling the code with a unique virtual prefix that is something like /tmp/boxes/4031e76a-6bff-11e3-a3b0-002590a9f2cc so that it can be symlinked to any directory in the filesystem. The tool also generates a script that sets environment variables so that includes, libraries, executables, man pages, etc... are all found in the path. It also allows to install several versions of the same package and instantly switching from a version to another, which is very useful during development. Unfortunately I didn't have more time to work on it so it is basically unmaintained, but every now and then I still use it, mainly when I need to install software on machines where I don't have administrative privileges, and it works great. I wish I implemented some kind of dependency handling mechanism, it would have made it much more useful. [1] https://github.com/ot/bpt https://github.com/ot/bpt