[Python-Dev] [PEPs] Rebooting PEP 394 (aka Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream) (original) (raw)

Kerrick Staley mail at kerrickstaley.com
Wed Jul 20 08:53:09 CEST 2011

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 3:03 AM, Ned Deily <nad at acm.org> wrote:

I think adding the requirement to mandate hard link vs soft link usage is an unnecessary and unwarranted attempt at optimization. For instance, IIRC, the OS X installers don't use any hard links: that may complicate the install, plus hard links on OS X HFS* file systems are a bit of a kludge and not necessarily more efficient than symlinks. It's not a big deal but perhaps the wording should be changed to make a suggestion about hard links vs syminks rather than mandate which should be used.

Ah, OK. The wording's been changed so that symbolic links will be installed on Mac OS X and hard links elsewhere (although maybe symbolic links are also better on certain other platforms; I'm not sure).

I do think that specific instructions must be given (rather than just a suggestion) because it's indicating what must be done to CPython. The instructions should be as close as possible to what the installer already does, but I'm not entirely sure what the installer does by default, and the hard-link recommendation was based off a cursory inspection of my own system, so further input from yourself and the rest of python-dev would be appreciated.

Nick, can you please apply the patch (will be sent in the following email) to the PEP SVN as soon as we get the hard-link issue is figured out? Alternatively, could you provide me write access to just the pep-0394.txt file so I can update it myself? Thanks.

-Kerrick Staley

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