On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Mark Hammond <skippy.hammond@gmail.com> wrote:
IIUC, the PEP language is referring to links which point to a specific version of Python and that there is no suggestion a 'python3' will live in the Python 3 binary tree. If that is correct and assuming we don't want to investigate using links on Windows, I'd suggest the best analogy to the *nix situation could be simply for the installers to generate "python2.bat" and "python3.bat" files and put them in System32 with a "last installed wins" policy. The fact this doesn't help users installing Python "just for me" is fine too from the POV of matching *nix systems - a user installing a private Python build on *nix also doesn't get the python2 and python3 conveniences, nor the automatic PATH convenience. But in practice I expect this would *not* be OK - which just highlights the risks of trying to generalize a specific observed problem on one OS to others.
Why not modify the windows installers to install into C:\Python\X.Y and have the .bat files generated in C:\Python which is what I have been doing manually since py25. I just add C:\Python to the system Path then create/modify the bat files for new versions of python I install. C:\Python\python.bat -> 3.2/python.exe C:\Python\python2.bat -> 2.7/python.exe C:\Python\python3.bat -> 3.2/python.exe C:\Python\python2.5.bat -> 2.5/python.exe ... Something I have been thinking about recently though is outside the scope of the pep is writing a python.exe, to replace the python.bat, that would try to read the shebang line of the file to send it to the right version of python. Then I just associate py files with the dispatcher exe and everything should work as intended.