[New-bugs-announce] [issue46901] Deprecate and eventually remove macOS-only PYTHONEXECUTABLE environ variable

[Ned Deily]

New submission from Ned Deily <nad at python.org>:

The PYTHONEXECUTABLE is a holdover from old Python 2 days; AFAIK, it was specifically to support the Build Applet tool which could be used to build macOS app bundles in Python 2. The only place in current Py3 releases where it is used is in the standard library is in the launch of IDLE.app, a usage that should be able to be eliminated. Otherwise, there shouldn't be any need for it by third-parties.  For 3.11, we could eliminate its use by IDLE.app and add a deprecation warning to the docs; not sure about an execution time warning?

https://docs.python.org/3/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONEXECUTABLE

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assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation, macOS
messages: 414382
nosy: docs at python, ned.deily, ronaldoussoren, steve.dower
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Deprecate and eventually remove macOS-only PYTHONEXECUTABLE environ variable
versions: Python 3.11

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue46901>
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