site --- Site-specific configuration hook — Startup entry points (.start files)

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions). A startup entry point file is a file whose name has the form {name}.start and exists in one of the site-packages directories described above. Each file specifies entry points to be called during interpreter startup, using the pkg.mod:callable syntax understood by pkgutil.resolve_name. Each non-blank line that does not begin with # must contain an entry point reference in the form pkg.mod:callable. The colon and callable portion are mandatory. Each callable is invoked with no arguments, and any return value is discarded. .start files are processed after all .pth path extensions have been applied to sys.path, ensuring that paths are available before any startup code runs. Unlike sys.path extensions from .pth files, duplicate entry points are not de-duplicated --- if an entry point appears more than once, it will be called more than once. If an exception occurs during resolution or invocation of an entry point, a traceback is printed to sys.stderr and processing continues with the remaining entry points. .start files must be encoded in UTF-8. 829 defined the original specification for these features. If a {name}.start file exists alongside a {name}.pth file with the same base name, any import lines in the .pth file are ignored in favor of the entry points in the .start file. Executable lines (import lines in {name}.pth files and {name}.start file entry points) are always run at Python startup (unless -S is given to disable the site.py module entirely), regardless of whether a particular module is actually going to be used. {name}.start files invoke pkgutil.resolve_name with strict=True, which requires the full pkg.mod:callable form. single: package triple: path; configuration; file Attribution: Adapted from Python Documentation under PSF-2.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.