[Python-3000] [Python-ideas] Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

[Adam Olsen]

On Feb 4, 2008 4:56 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 15:34:56 -0800 (PST) "Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve" <rwgk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > As Python developers you have to realize that for many people Python is
> > "just" a core around which they build much bigger applications. If the
> > success of Python is to continue, you have to give your large user
> > base a clear path to working with two co-existing Python versions,
> > so that installing a Python 3 application doesn't break all Python 2
> > applications (some of which may never be converted since the original
> > developers have moved on). For example, I really need to be able
> > to use wxPython based on Python 2 and wxPython based on Python 3
> > simultaneously on my Windows machine. I'm thinking this is only
> > possible if Python 3 uses a new file extension.
>
> I think the key word here is "Windows". I have no trouble doing all of
> this on a Unix system without changing the extensions, but it's a lot
> less dependent on file extensions.

So why don't we add a windows equivalent of the shebang?  Files could
then start like this:

#!/usr/bin/python2.3
#¡C:/python23/python

Of course, something better than ¡ needs to be chosen.

A problem with this approach is that, if you only had 2.3 and 2.5
installed, both it'd be completely ignored.  You'd need to install a
newer version (2.6 or 3.0) to force the use of 2.3.


-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus