[Distutils] desirability of multiple, divergent Python instances

[Stephen Waterbury]

Stephen Waterbury wrote:
> Have you read my proposal?  It's in the message posted by me to this
> thread at 12:31 PM today.

That's not a good way to reference it, of course, so here it is:

Definitions:

"system Python" -- the Python (and its site-pkgs, etc.) that any Python
scripts used by the OS depend on, which would of course by solely determined
by the OS.

This would be distinct, in my proposal, from any packages named
"python" or "python.x" in the package namespace of the system package
manager (e.g. apt).

What I am proposing:

1)  that the OS comes with its own "system Python", which is installed
not as the "python" package, but as some OS-required package
(maybe call it "system-python" or something) and it goes into
/usr/system/bin/python or whatever -- it doesn't matter what the
path is as long as it's not /usr/bin or anything on the default
path.  And system utilities that are python scripts should have
their own system-specific, hard-coded shebang line.

2)  that separately from the "system Python", the available packages
managed by the system's package manager include one or more "python.x"
packages which are python interpreters that the user or sysadmin can
optionally install, and which go into /usr, and which would share
*nothing* with the "system Python".  And the system package
manager -- e.g., apt on Debian/Ubuntu systems) would have all its usual
nicely-packaged python apps (python-this, python-that, ...) that would
also install into /usr and use the nicely-packaged python (not to be
confused with the "system Python" of 1).

Fire away!  :)

Steve