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

[Paul Moore]

On 17 February 2015 at 18:52, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
>>So, the options I see:
>>
>>1. Stick with /usr/bin/env python
>>2. No shebang unless -p is specified
>>3. Unix users come up with a solution which is the same as the above
>>for Windows users, but which suits them better.
>
> #2 seems to me to be the most reasonable alternative.  The resulting pyz files
> (built w/o -p) would still be explicitly executable, just like .py files.

I'm pretty sure that's the way the general feeling is going.

> However, -p must be able to accept any number of strings, including
> "/usr/bin/env python3" if the user wants that.

The code simply writes
'#!{}\n'.format(p_option).encode(sys.filesystemencoding()) to the
file, so you can put whatever you want in. Given that it isn't the
name of the Python executable, maybe the option should be
--interpreter instead?

Oh, and am I right that the shebang line should be encoded using the
filesystem encoding on Unix? I know 99.999% of use cases will be
ascii, but someone could have a Python interpreter in
/home/léon/.local/bin/python...

> Probably the best thing to do (on *nix at least) is, if the path is absolute,
> use the given string verbatim.  If the path is relative, search for the given
> executable on $PATH and use the first one found.  If nothing is found, use
> what's given explicitly.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but maybe you're thinking that
the -p option is the executable name rather than what gets put in the
#! line directly? Let me know if it's not covered by what I've already
said.

Paul