[Python-Dev] PEP 394 request for pronouncement (python2 symlink in *nix systems) (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Feb 13 03:31:45 CET 2012

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 6:42 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

IMO a symlink is far and away the better choice in this situation. Please wait with that judgment until you see the rationale of the PEP author.

Kerrick did post a rationale in the last thread [1], but it never made it into the PEP itself. The relevant comment:

========== Also, I updated the PEP with the clarification that commands like python3 should be hard links (because they'll be invoked from code and are more efficient; also, hard links are just as flexible as symlinks here), while commands like python should be soft links (because this makes it clear to sysadmins that they can be "switched", and it's needed for flexibility if python3 changes). This really doesn't matter, but can we keep it this way unless there are serious objections?

I think Antoine makes a good point about ease of introspection when you have multiple versions in the same series installed, so I'd be fine with:

This does mean that launching Python may involve a slightly longer symlink chain in some cases (python -> python2 -> python2.7), but the impact of that is always going to be utterly dwarfed by other startup costs.

[1] http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-July/112322.html

Cheers, Nick.

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

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list