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support Maya site packages in documents folder

Problem

Maya doesn’t detect editable packages installed in Documents\Maya\scripts
because the site-packages in your documents folder are not a Python site dir.

Solution

run this in maya to create usersetup to add site packages on startup.
this might clash with existing usersetups.

import os
import site
import maya.cmds as cmds

def create_user_setup():
    """create a usersetup to add site packages from the documents folder"""
    # Get Maya version and construct the scripts folder path
    maya_version = cmds.about(version=True)

    if maya_version == "Preview Release":
        maya_version = 2026  # TODO update in future

    user_docs = os.path.expanduser("~\\Documents")
    scripts_folder = os.path.join(user_docs, f"maya\\{maya_version}\\scripts")

    # Ensure the scripts folder exists
    if not os.path.exists(scripts_folder):
        os.makedirs(scripts_folder)

    # Path to the userSetup.py file
    user_setup_path = os.path.join(scripts_folder, "userSetup.py")

    # Define the content to be written in userSetup.py
    content = (
        "import site\n"
        f"site.addsitedir(r\"{scripts_folder}\\site-packages\")\n"
        f"site.addsitedir(r\"{user_docs}\\maya\\scripts\\site-packages\")\n"
    )

    # Write the content to userSetup.py
    with open(user_setup_path, "w") as file:
        file.write(content)

    print(f"userSetup.py has been created at: {user_setup_path}")

create_user_setup()

Research

We should install to site packages instead:

  • C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\2026\scripts\site-packages
  • C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\scripts\site-packages

These paths aren’t by default included in maya site packages, similar too
Blender doesn’t support editable Python packages

  • this was highlighted in Maya site package manager
  • there’s commented out code in py-pip to handle this. but only on install, not startup.
  • TODO, create startup maya solution.

current workaround, run on startup.

import site
site.addsitedir(r"C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\2026\scripts\site-packages")
site.addsitedir(r"C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\scripts\site-packages")

maya only includes 

site packages [
'D:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2026\\Python', 
'D:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2026\\Python\\Lib\\site-packages']

user site packages
C:\Users\H\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\site-packages

can we install a script in site packages to add the folders in documents?

import site
site.addsitedir(r"C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\2026\scripts\site-packages")
site.addsitedir(r"C:\Users\H\Documents\maya\scripts\site-packages")

after this i can import my custom edit installs but path still prints the old paths.
Turns out that site.getsitepackages() and site.getusersitepackages() are not designed to show the paths dynamically added using site.addsitedir()

To see dynamic added paths use

import sys
print("\n".join(sys.path))

default sys paths
C:/Users/H/Documents/maya/2026/scripts/site-packagesMaya includes it in sys.paths
C:/Users/H/Documents/maya/scripts/site-packages isn’t in paths

i edit installed plugget to

  • C:/Users/H/Documents/maya/scripts
  • C:/Users/H/Documents/maya/2026/scripts/site-packages
    they default show up in sys.paths, but they’r not a sitedir.
    plugget is only importable after adding it with sys.addsitedir