I have made this suggestion in the past. The response then was that there is no metadata in the windows install that includes if the release is development or stable (that information is not stored in the registry). I was advised to adjust my configuration of the py.exe launcher to set a different default version.
I think that's a reasonable stance to take with development versions - they are intended for testing in specialist situations, so you can expect the users to take the extra steps to make sure using them doesn't blow up their world.
It still would be nice if the registry details of the install had a bool "stable" field that py.exe could poll. I can't imagine it adds a lot to the release process, or adds significant complexity to the launcher, and that negates the need to update the launcher regularly.
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Barnes GadgetSteve@live.co.uk Sent: Tuesday, July 9, 2019 1:32 AM To: Python-Ideas python-ideas@python.org Subject: [Python-ideas] Suggestion: Windows launcher default to not using pre-releases by default
Currently the py[w] command will launch the latest python by default however I feel that this discourages the testing of pre-releases & release candidates as once they are installed they will become the default. What I would like is for the default to be the highest version number of a full
release
but the user to be able to specify a specific version even if it is a
pre-release.
The currently py or py -3 would give python 3.7 (if installed) but py -3.8
would
give the pre-release/release candidate if installed.
Any thoughts on whether this would be a good idea - I am quite willing to undertake the changes.
Steve Barnes