Inconsistent binary link creation when creating virtual environment with venv module

[Coirier, Emmanuel]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently creating virtual environments with the venv module included in Python ("python -m venv <venv_name>"). I've noticed that the environment is not always consistent when using the same base interpreter with different names.

When I use the alias python3.n (python3.6 / python3.7 / python3.8) to create the environment like this example :

python3.7 -m venv venv37

The environment is created with 3 links to the python binary :

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    9 21 nov.  17:29 python -> python3.7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    9 21 nov.  17:29 python3 -> python3.7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   43 21 nov.  17:29 python3.7 -> /place/to/real/bin/python3.7

But when I use the bare python interpreter (python without version number in its name) like this :

python -m venv venv37

The environment is only created with 2 links to the python binary :

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   40 21 nov.  17:33 python -> /place/to/real/bin/python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    6 21 nov.  17:33 python3 -> python

The python3.7 link is missing. This behavior is not observed with the pip installer which is always shipped in 3 flavors (pip, pip3, pip3.7)

Beside how this is coded, is there any functionnal reason to explain this behavior ? Shouldn't the 3 links be always created, regardless of which alias is used ?

Best regards,

--
Emmanuel Coirier
Informatique CDC


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