[Idle-dev] multiple Python versions and testing

[Terry Reedy]

On 12/14/2011 1:50 PM, Sean Wolfe wrote:
> Looking over the bug list for IDLE, it looks like it will be useful
> for me to be running multiple Python versions, to be able to work on /
> test various versions. I personally haven't made the switch yet as my
> two favorite Pythonic things, Django and Pygame, are still in the 2.x
> world. Im currently running 2.7 for my personal projects. That being
> said though, I'm happy to give the 3.x world a shot.
> Is there anything I should keep in mind running multiple versions?
> Just make sure my PYTHONPATH and IDLEPATH, plus basic system path to
> my python binary, are where I want them? I'm assuming as idle devs you
> guys are running multiple versions. Any gotchas or special things I
> should be looking for? Anything that might invalidate testing?

On Windows, multiple versions are no problem except that the icons are 
labelled the same for each. Multiple versions of Python and IDLE running 
at the same time is ok.

On *nix, I read that one should be careful to use altinstall so as to 
not clobber the system python, which may be used by system-dependent 
utilities.

That said, even testing bugs and patch only on 2.7 is helpful, 
expecially if no one else has.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy