Is site-packages appropriate for applications or just libraries?
Site-packages is for libraries, definitely.
A hybrid approach might work: you can install the libraries required by your application in site-packages and then install the main module elsewhere.
I'm in a bit of a discussion with some other developers on an open source project. I'm new to python but it seems to me that site-packages is meant for libraries and not end user applications. Is that true or is site-packages an appropriate place to install an application meant to be run by an end user?