[Python-Dev] issue 9807 - a glitch in coexisting builds of different types (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Oct 4 21:10:09 CEST 2010

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 14:41:11 -0400 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

For a distro, all those Python binaries have to go in /usr/bin. We already symlink /usr/bin/python to pythonX.Y so I don't see the harm in a few extra symlinks.

Why would a distro want to provide all combinations of Python builds?

One important issue for me is guessability. While "d" is reasonably guessable (and "dbg" or "debug" would be even better), "u" and "m" are not. (actually, "u" could lead to misunderstandings such as "is this a unicode-enabled version of Python?"; as for "m", I don't know what it's for)

As for the SOABI, you could use a different mangling which would preserve the ".so" suffix -- e.g. "-debug.so" instead of ".so.d". At least then well-known conventions would be preserved.

Regards

Antoine.

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