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

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:21 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Am 04.03.2011 20:14, schrieb Guido van Rossum:
>> Is there any discussion still going on about the details of the PEP
>> (now PEP 394)? I'm in favor of the general idea. What about Windows? I
>> think it should be the same there if possible.
>
> I think a key issue is whether to change future 2.7 bug fix releases or
> not. People have been opposed to the very notion of adding this feature
> in a bug fix release; not sure how they feel if the change is
> PEP-sanctioned.

Personally I think this is fine -- it 's not like this is affecting
language or library compatibility, but doing this from now on
emphasizes that this is what we want distros to do. As far as I'm
concerned we could go further and add creation of the python2 symlink
to the "make install" target for new bugfix releases of older versions
too.

> As for Windows support: we currently don't install a python3.exe binary,
> let alone python2.exe or pythonw2.exe (or is that python2w.exe?). I'll
> adjust the installer if the PEP asks me to. For the reasons discussed,
> I'm -0 on the change (i.e. double-clicking .py will continue to launch
> the most-recently installed Python, rather than the "right" one, and
> setting PYTHONPATH will continue to break installations).

I'm not a Windows user so I'll leave this part to the group of
interested developers to reach consensus.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)