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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Mon May 7 11:52:00 CEST 2012

3) Symlink the interpreter rather than copying. I include this here for the sake of completeness, but it's already been rejected due to significant problems on older Windows' and OS X.

That sounds the right solution to me. PEP 405 specifies that bin/python3 exists, but not that it is the actual Python interpreter binary that is normally used. For each target system, a solution should be defined that allows in-place updates of Python that also update all venvs automatically.

For example, for Windows, it would be sufficient to just have the executable in bin/, as the update will only affect pythonXY.dll. That executable may be different from the regular python.exe, and it might be necessary that it locates its Python installation first. For Unix, symlinks sound fine. Not sure what the issue with OS X is.

Regards, Martin

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