Comment 1 for bug 1971637

This is still a major problem with Ubuntu 24.04 and python 3.12. I realize this choice has been in ubuntu for years after looking at other bug reports that were rejected. Sadly, this choice breaks projects that use the standard sitecustomize machinery to initialize their python environments and force them into really bad workarounds and hacks.

For anyone else stumbling into this, one workaround is to modify the /etc/python3.12/sitecustomize.py file to have a block like this appended to the file:

#############################################################################################
# support a virtualenv's sitecustomize file
import importlib.machinery, os, sys, types

initial_paths = sys.path[:]
for p in initial_paths:
    if p.startswith(sys.exec_prefix) and p.endswith("site-packages"):
        venv_sitecustomize = os.path.join(p, "sitecustomize.py")
        if os.path.exists(venv_sitecustomize):
            sfl = importlib.machinery.SourceFileLoader("sitecustomize", venv_sitecustomize)
            sfl.exec_module(types.ModuleType(sfl.name))
##############################################################################################

The suggestions in the descriptions are excellent and would allow the apport stuff to work and not impact serious python backend projects that never want to install or use the apport bug reporting features and need to be able to use sitecustomize in their virtual environments.