[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Fri Mar 4 19:10:13 CET 2011


On 04/03/2011 17:45, Kerrick Staley wrote:
> > Right, but on Mac OS X we do put a "python3" on the path but not a 
> "python2". We also
> > create "python2.x" and "python3.x" variants.
>
> The PEP makes a recommendation for all *nix platform, which includes 
> Mac OS X. I was not aware that Apple preinstalled Python on OS X, but 
> it doesn't really matter: Apple is the "distribution maintainer", and 
> they will be expected to follow the recommendations of this PEP. Even 
> if Apple is sluggish in getting this change pushed out, it can be 
> resolved on a per-system basis by the sysadmin.
>

So there are three issues:

* What Apple does with the system install - out of our control but we 
can make recommendations
* What `make install` does on Mac OS X
* What the standard Mac OS X installer does

The last two of these are in our control. If we actually make changes to 
the build/install scripts of 2.7, rather than just recommendations for 
distributions, then it would be nice to see the changes in the installer 
as well as the build script. This would ultimately be up to Ronald or 
Ned who do the Mac OS X work of course.

> > On Windows we only have a "python.exe" I believe, but if the user 
> does put their Python
> > installs on the path then we *could* usefully create "python2.exe" 
> and "python3.exe" for
> > them. I don't see that duplicating these binaries on the filesystem 
> is an issue. File
> > associations is just unsolvable on Windows, so it isn't something we 
> can address or should
> > worry about. (Actually a stub python.exe that looks at the shebang 
> line and then
> > delegates to the appropriate pythonX.Y.exe would be a possibility but 
> I'm not
> > volunteering to write it.)
>
> I like your idea for Windows, but it would take time to implement this 
> solution, and we won't be able to finalize the solution for *nix as 
> quickly if we also provide a provision for Windows in this same PEP.

I don't think duplicating python.exe as python2.exe or python3.exe would 
be very much work at all, if we decide it is a good thing. Sure it 
doesn't resolve all the myriad problems of Python on Windows but I don't 
think that is a good reason not to consider it. Up to Martin on this one 
though and again depends if we just make recommendations or actually 
change Python 2.7.

All the best,

Michael

>
> We should keep the use of the singular "they"; it's more popular than 
> the universal "he" (I intended the universal, rather than 
> gender-specific, meaning in the drafts of the PEP).
>
> -Kerrick Staley
>
> On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Ronald Oussoren 
> <ronaldoussoren at mac.com <mailto:ronaldoussoren at mac.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On 04 Mar, 2011,at 02:21 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com
>     <mailto:ncoghlan at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     For *nix, I think there is a simple way forward that is an
>>     improvement
>>     over where things stand now. For Windows, I don't think we can do
>>     much
>>     better than the status quo and for Mac OS X... I think Apple will do
>>     whatever Apple feel like doing :)
>     Apple will generally follow what we decide to do for the base
>     install.
>
>     Anyway, I'd say that OSX should do the same as Unix platforms here
>     and support '#!/usr/bin/env python2'. Adding another symlink is
>     fairly trivial.
>
>     Ronald
>
>     P.S. I'm a bit confused about this discussion though, wouldn't
>     adding python2 to the installation be a feature change and as such
>     not something that can be done in a maintenance branch?
>
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