[Python-Dev] Re: Utility scripts

[Tim Peters]

[Garth T Kidd]
> Half the software on my workstation has changed environment variables,
> social or not. To me, it's less social to leave me to manually change
> PATHEXT. I'd much rather have Python add its extensions to PATHEXT --
> and also have distutils add .py to the extension of Python scripts
> dropped into the Scripts directory.

So contribute installer code to do so -- and don't forget to make the
uninstaller smart enough to remove them again, without damaging what
other installers may have added in the meantime.

Ah, you don't want it enough to do anything to get it <wink>.  That's
OK.  What good would it do you if it were there?  As was made plain in
the rest of this thread, PATHEXT does nothing except on cmd.exe
systems.  On cmd.exe systems, it only allows to leave the trailing
".py" off, and since cmd.exe's path completion fills in the ".py" for
you, you then have to manually delete the ".py" in order to get a
benefit from PATHEXT.  Unless you add directories containing Python
scripts to your PATH envar too -- in which case you can't credibly
claim that adding .py to PATHEXT is beyond your abilities or time.

Adding ".py" to scripts is a different issue, but that belongs on the
distutils list.