[Python-Dev] PEP 405 (pyvenv) and system Python upgrades (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sat May 5 08:41:47 CEST 2012

On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 6:49 AM, Carl Meyer <carl at oddbird.net> wrote:

1) Document it and provide a tool for easily upgrading a venv in this situation. This may be adequate. In practice the situation is quite rare: 2.6.8/2.7.3 is the only actual example in the history of virtualenv that I'm aware of. The disadvantage is that if the problem does occur, the error will probably be quite confusing and seemingly unrelated to pyvenv.

I think this is the way to go, for basically the same reasons that we did it this way this time: there's no good reason to pay an ongoing cost to further mitigate the risks associated with an already incredibly rare event.

It would become part of the standard venv debugging toolkit:

Q X.1: Does the problem only occur inside a particular virtual environment? Q X.2: If yes, did you recently upgrade the system Python to a new point release? Q X.3: If yes, did you run ? Q X.4: If no, do so and see if the problem goes away. Even if it still doesn't work, at least you've eliminated this particular error as a possible cause.

Personally, I expect that "always update your virtual environment binaries after updating the system Python to a new point release" will itself become a recommended practice when using virtual environments.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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