[Python-Dev] PEP 405 (venv) - why does it copy the DLLs on Windows (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sat Mar 23 14:51:41 CET 2013

On 23 March 2013 12:55, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:57:02 +0000 Richard Oudkerk <shibturn at gmail.com> wrote:

On 23/03/2013 10:06am, Paul Moore wrote: >> One example of a non-system-wide installation is a source build of Python. >> PEP 405 venvs created from a source build should work in the same way as venvs >> created using an installed Python. > > Thanks. I hadn't thought of that case. However, I'm still not entirely > clear why the DLLs need to be copied. I'll set up a source build and > test virtualenv against it to see if it fails. Assuming it does, I > should be able to work out what the issue is from that.

Also, couldn't hard links be used instead of copying? (This will fail if not on the same NTFS partition, but then one can copy as a fallback.) Hard links are generally hard to discover and debug (at least under Unix, but I suppose the same applies under Windows).

Yes. And links in general are less common, and so more of a surprise, on Windows as well. Paul

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