title: What is the purpose of $HOME/.local
body: <p>I've noticed that I have <code>$HOME/.local</code> on my machine and seems that this directory contains mostly stuff related to python, <a href="http://termbin.com/vw35" rel="noreferrer">here</a> is it's full list (it is a bit long).</p>
  
  <p>I would like to ask which action created this directory? I suppose it was <code>pip install --user -r requirements.txt</code> (bellow are commands by which I've figured it out) but I am wondering if there any other tools that stores data here? I suppose if it was <code>pip</code> so <code>easy_install</code> can do this as well or not? Are there any other tools you're aware of that uses this directory or it is <code>pip</code> exclusively?</p>
  
  <p>Following command shows that some python module was imported from this directory, output of last one is <a href="http://termbin.com/xs62" rel="noreferrer">here</a> (it is a bit long):</p>
  
  <pre><code>marek@ubuntu:~$ python -c 'import mock; print mock.__file__'
  /home/marek/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mock.pyc
  marek@ubuntu:~$ echo $PYTHONPATH
  
  marek@ubuntu:~$ tree .local/ | grep  mock
  │           ├── mock-1.0.1.egg-info
  │           ├── mock.py
  │           ├── mock.pyc
  │           │   ├── mock.py
  │           │   ├── mock.pyc
  marek@ubuntu:~$ pip show -f mock
  ---
  Name: mock
  Version: 1.0.1
  Location: /home/marek/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
  Requires: 
  Files:
  Cannot locate installed-files.txt
  marek@ubuntu:~$ python -c 'import sys, pprint; pprint.pprint(sys.path)'
  ['',
   '/home/marek/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/nupic-0.3.0.dev0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
   '/home/marek/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages',
   '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PILcompat',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0',
   '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7',
   '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntu-sso-client']
  marek@ubuntu:~$ python -v 2&gt;&amp;1 | tee modules
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7143077/how-can-i-install-packages-in-my-home-folder-with-pip">following</a> answer says that there should be <code>$HOME/.local/bin/hg</code> in this directory if it was created with <code>pip</code> but I do not have this file. So was it created with <code>pip</code> or not?</p>