[Python-Dev] PEP 397 - Last Comments

[Mark Hammond]

Sorry, but I missed the announcement of an updated PEP.

It looks good to me!  Also, I see no reason not to always use a 32bit 
version of the launcher other than (a) the 64bit code already exists and 
works and (b) it might mean it is no longer possible to do a complete 
build of a 64bit Python without the 32bit compilers installed.  But (b) 
is really only a theoretical problem so I think in practice it would be 
fine either way.

Thanks to Martin for updating it - I agree it is vastly improved!

Cheers,

Mark

On 19/06/2012 2:31 PM, Brian Curtin wrote:
> Martin approached me earlier and requested that I act as PEP czar for
> 397. I haven't been involved in the writing of the PEP and have been
> mostly observing from the outside, so I accepted and hope to get this
> wrapped up quickly and implemented in time for the beta. The PEP is
> pretty complete, but there are a few outstanding issues.
>
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> "Independent installations will always only overwrite newer versions of the
>> launcher with older versions." 'always only' is a bit awkward and the
>> sentence looks backwards to me. I would expect only overwriting older
>> versions with newer versions.
>
> Agreed, I would expect the same. I would think taking out the word
> "only" and then flipping newer and older in the sentence would correct
> it.
>
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>> These seem contradictory:
>>
>> "The 32-bit distribution of Python will not install a 32-bit version of the
>> launcher on a 64-bit system."
>>
>> I presume this mean that it will install the 64-bit version and that there
>> will always be only one version of the launcher on the system.
>>
>> "On 64bit Windows with both 32bit and 64bit implementations of the same
>> (major.minor) Python version installed, the 64bit version will always be
>> preferred.  This will be true for both 32bit and 64bit implementations of
>> the launcher - a 32bit launcher will prefer to execute a 64bit Python
>> installation of the specified version if available."
>>
>> This implies to me that the 32bit installation *will* install a 32bit
>> launcher and that there could be both versions of the launcher installed.
>
> I took that as covering an independently-installed launcher.
>
> You could always install your own 32-bit launcher, and it'd prefer to
> launch a binary matching the machine type. So yes, there could be
> multiple launchers installed for different machine types, and I'm not
> sure why we'd want to (or how we could) prevent people from installing
> them. You could have a 64-bit launcher available system-wide in your
> Windows folder, then you could have a 32-bit launcher running out of
> C:\Users\Terry for some purposes.
>
> Martin - is that correct?
>
> ===
>
> Outside of Terry's concerns, I find the updated PEP almost ready to go
> as-is. Many of the updates were in line with what Martin and I briefly
> talked about at PyCon, and I believe some of them came out of previous
> PEP discussions on here, so I see nothing unexpected at this point.
>
> My only additional comment would be to have the "Configuration file"
> implementation details supplemented with a readable example of where
> the py.ini file should be placed. On my machine that is
> "C:\Users\brian\AppData\Local", rather than making people have to run
> that parameter through the listed function via pywin32.
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