[Python-Dev] PEP 441 - Improving Python ZIP Application Support

[Paul Moore]

On 16 February 2015 at 16:34, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:
>> As far as I know, this is *identical* behaviour to Unix - even to the incredibly
>> annoying (to me) choice of Python 2 as a default. So I reconfigure the default
>> in my personal settings to Python 3. Unix users can do this too (although it may
>> involve a symlink in a ~/bin directory rather than an ini file change).
>
> We could also add special-cases for "#!/usr/...python3" in the launcher on Windows.

The launcher handles that. It runs the same thing as "py -3" runs.
Which may not be the same as what "py" runs (in my case it runs 3.5a1
where py runs 3.4). Arguably that's an odd choice, but it's simply
that I only use "py" in the normal course of events so I only set the
"python" default, not the "python3" default.

My point is that on Windows, users typically don't change the
executable name they use[1], but rather configure the "python" (or
"py") command to do what they want. So I think that on Windows we
should follow that convention and execute whatever "python"/"py"
execute.

Paul

[1] As usual with anything like this, it's hard to get a sense of
what's "typical" so if hordes of Windows users suddenly post saying
they routinely use "python2" and "python3" commands, I'll happily
concede I'm not the norm here and ask someone to step up and document
recommended practices on Windows better, and I'll update the PEP to
follow them :-)