[Python-3000] should Python 3's executable install as 'python'?

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:33:21 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
>
>  > skip at pobox.com writes:
>  >
>  >  > I still think it worthwhile to have *some* target in the Makefile
>  >  > which depends on altinstall and does the bininstall and maninstall
>  >  > steps.  Something like "makeprimary"?
>  > How about "install-as-python" or "install-as-default"?
>
>  How about the install target smart? If there's a $PREFIX/bin/python,
>  it doesn't clobber it. If there's not, it does.

That's not enough -- this might hide a "python" on the shell's $PATH
in a later spot.

During the next 3 years or so, installing Py3k as the default "python"
will be a deed of utter irresponsibility and is likely to break your
system in subtle ways (both OSX and Linux these days use Python for
certain system tasks). If you *really* want to shoot yourself in the
foot this way, go ahead and explicitly use "make altinstall
bininstall" or link it yourself.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)