Stephen Waterbury wrote:
Have you read my proposal? It's in the message posted by me to this thread at 12:31 PM today.
That's not a good way to reference it, of course, so here it is: Definitions: "system Python" -- the Python (and its site-pkgs, etc.) that any Python scripts used by the OS depend on, which would of course by solely determined by the OS. This would be distinct, in my proposal, from any packages named "python" or "python.x" in the package namespace of the system package manager (e.g. apt). What I am proposing: 1) that the OS comes with its own "system Python", which is installed not as the "python" package, but as some OS-required package (maybe call it "system-python" or something) and it goes into /usr/system/bin/python or whatever -- it doesn't matter what the path is as long as it's not /usr/bin or anything on the default path. And system utilities that are python scripts should have their own system-specific, hard-coded shebang line. 2) that separately from the "system Python", the available packages managed by the system's package manager include one or more "python.x" packages which are python interpreters that the user or sysadmin can optionally install, and which go into /usr, and which would share *nothing* with the "system Python". And the system package manager -- e.g., apt on Debian/Ubuntu systems) would have all its usual nicely-packaged python apps (python-this, python-that, ...) that would also install into /usr and use the nicely-packaged python (not to be confused with the "system Python" of 1). Fire away! :) Steve