[Python-Dev] PEP 405 (venv) - why does it copy the DLLs on Windows

[Paul Moore]

On 23 March 2013 01:08, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Paul Moore <p.f.moore <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I don't understand what this is saying - can someone clarify the
>> reason behind this statement? What is different about a
>> "non-system-wide installation" that causes this issue (I assume
>> "non-system-wide" means "not All Users")? The reason I ask is that
>> virtualenv doesn't do this, and I'm not clear if this is because of a
>> potential bug lurking in virtualenv (in which case, I'd like to find
>> out how to reproduce it) or because virtualenv takes a different
>> approach which avoids this issue somehow.
>
> One example of a non-system-wide installation is a source build of Python.
> PEP 405 venvs created from a source build should work in the same way as venvs
> created using an installed Python.

Thanks. I hadn't thought of that case. However, I'm still not entirely
clear *why* the DLLs need to be copied. I'll set up a source build and
test virtualenv against it to see if it fails. Assuming it does, I
should be able to work out what the issue is from that.

Paul