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

[Tim Golden]

On 07/03/2011 10:49, Mark Hammond wrote:
> On 7/03/2011 9:33 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>> That sounds like a fairly cool idea. So if I follow what you're
>> suggesting, we'd have a single python.exe, probably installed in
>> system32, which did the necessary command line juggling and shebang
>> parsing, then simply redirected to the appropriate Python interpreter?
>> Presumably that launcher would be pretty version independent, so (a)
>> the one that gets installed with Python 3.3 would support older
>> versions even though they didn't include the launcher themselves, (b)
>> overwriting the launcher when a new version of Python is installed
>> wouldn't be too big a deal, and (c) it could be released as a
>> standalone package for people with only older versions of Python
>> installed?
>
> Yup - although I think a pythonw.exe launcher would be needed too (for
> the same reasons we need python.exe and pythonw.exe today)
>
>> I like this idea. If I had the spare time (I don't :-() I'd work on
>> this myself.
>>
>> +1 from me.

Agreed all round. In the highly unlikely event that I find
some time I too might have a play with the idea. The devil
will undoubtedly be in the details. I've implemented
a Pure-python version of this before, but found it unacceptably
slow for anything but ad-hoc use. Still, it was useful for
that :)

TJG