Installing two different versions of Python on Windows

[Peter Hansen]

Sheila King wrote:
> 
> I currently have Python 2.1 installed on my home computer.
> So, I want to upgrade my home computer to 2.2.
> HOWEVER, I would like to leave my version 2.1 in place, for testing
> purposes.
> 
> If I simply take care to install the new Python 2.2 version in a separate
> directory, this should work OK, shouldn't it? I know that the system will
> default associate all the .py, .pyc, and .pyw files with the 2.2 executable
> and I would have to specifically invoke the 2.1 executable with a full path
> name if I wanted to run it, but that's fine, too. I expect I'll mostly use
> the newer 2.2.

If you have set environment variables (e.g. PYTHONHOME) you will of
course have to deal with those as well.  I've successfully had
multiple versions installed many times simply by doing what
you describe.