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

Carl Meyer carl at oddbird.net
Tue May 8 18:14:44 CEST 2012

Hi Paul,

On 05/07/2012 04:16 PM, Paul Moore wrote:

On 7 May 2012 21:55, "Martin v. Löwis"<martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

This sounds to me like a level of complexity unwarranted by the severity of the problem, especially when considering the additional burden it imposes on alternative Python implementations.

OTOH, it significantly reduces the burden on Python end users, for whom creation of a venv under a privileged account is a significant hassle. Personally, I would find a venv which required being run as an admin account to be essentially unusable on Windows (particularly Windows 7, where this means creating venvs in an "elevated" console window). Allowing for symlinks as an option is fine, I guess, but I'd be -1 on it being the default.

I don't think anyone has proposed making symlinks the default on Windows. At this point the two options on Windows would be to use the --symlink option explicitly, or else to need to run "pyvenv --upgrade" on your envs if you upgrade the underlying Python in-place (and there's a breaking incompatibility between the new stdlib and the old interpreter, which there almost never will be if the past is any indication).

I expect most users will opt for the latter option (equivalent to how current virtualenv works, except virtualenv doesn't have an --upgrade flag so you have to upgrade manually), but the former is also available if some prefer it.

In any case, the situation will be no worse than it is with virtualenv today.

Carl

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