[New-bugs-announce] [issue46744] installers on ARM64 suggest wrong folders

[conio]

New submission from conio <conio.h+bugs.python.org at gmail.com>:

Thank you for your work on bringing Python to Windows on ARM64.

I recently installed it an noticed some strange behaviours.

On ARM64 Windows 11 the recent prerelease (3.11.0a5, post #33125) acts in a way I believe is wrong: Checking the _install for all users_ checkbox causes the installer to suggest the `C:\Program Files (Arm)\Python311-Arm64` folder, but the `C:\Program Files (Arm)` is intended for ARM32 programs, similarly to how the `C:\Program Files (x86)` is intended for x86 programs.

The folder for programs that are native for the platform is simply `C:\Program Files` - which is x86 on x86 Windows, x64 on x64 Windows and ARM64 on ARM64 Windows.

So on ARM64 Windows the ARM64 Python should go into the native Program Files folder which is `C:\Program Files`.

--

A closely related issue is that the installer for x64 Python wants to install into `C:\Program Files\Python311`, but I already installed the ARM64 version there.

The x86 acts as as should be expected and wants to install into `C:\Program Files (x86)\Python311-32`.

But there's no "Program Files (x64)", so where should the x64 version on ARM64 machines go?

I argue that the x64 version should go into `C:\Program Files\Python311-amd64" while the ARM64 version should go into `C:\Program Files\Python311`, because the ARM64 is the native on on this platform, while the x64 is foreign, and should get an elaborate name, like the x86, which is also foreign, gets.

(The dotnet team also had this problem, and they decided similarly.)

Internally `sys.winver` and the PEP 514 Registry structure can say whatever you like, but on the filesystem it's much more appropriate for the unqualified folder to be the system native one.

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components: Installation, Windows
messages: 413199
nosy: conio, paul.moore, steve.dower, tim.golden, zach.ware
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: installers on ARM64 suggest wrong folders
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.11

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue46744>
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