[Python-Dev] [PEPs] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream

[Paul Moore]

On 7 March 2011 01:18, Mark Hammond <skippy.hammond at gmail.com> wrote:
> That said though, I'm only -0 on python2.exe/python3.exe - I don't think it
> will hurt, but also don't think it will help that much in practice. It may
> also turn out to be unnecessary should a "complete" solution be implemented
> - eg, a "python launcher" which (a) read the shebang lines and (b) allowed
> something like "python -3" on the command-line would render both python3.exe
> and requests to have multiple installed Python versions on the PATH
> redundant.

That sounds like a fairly cool idea. So if I follow what you're
suggesting, we'd have a single python.exe, probably installed in
system32, which did the necessary command line juggling and shebang
parsing, then simply redirected to the appropriate Python interpreter?
Presumably that launcher would be pretty version independent, so (a)
the one that gets installed with Python 3.3 would support older
versions even though they didn't include the launcher themselves, (b)
overwriting the launcher when a new version of Python is installed
wouldn't be too big a deal, and (c) it could be released as a
standalone package for people with only older versions of Python
installed?

I like this idea. If I had the spare time (I don't :-() I'd work on this myself.

+1 from me.

Paul.