[Python-Dev] PEP 370 - per-user scripts directory on Windows

[Paul Moore]

On 12 February 2015 at 15:37, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:
> If venv's activate script sets it, I say go ahead and write it up. If it's
> just virtualenv, I'd rather not explicitly depend on it, especially since
> PEP 397's stated aim is file associations and not command line.

Yep, venv uses it too (see
https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/9e10c4255277/Lib/venv/scripts/nt/activate.bat).

As people like Thomas (and me, until this issue stopped me :-)) are
using the launcher for command line use, I think it's fair to broaden
the scope to make command line usage more convenient. I agree that PEP
397 was originally focused mainly on file associations, but I think
it's worth looking beyond that now.

> I've been making changes to py.exe in hg.p.o, so I hope the standalone one
> is tracking. The msi for it as part of the official build can also
> standalone, so maybe we should merge the two?

Hmm, sadly I don't think it is. Originally the standalone one was (I
believe) provided by Vinay for people using Pythons that didn't have
it bundled, and to add features (such as the new file extensions) on a
quicker timescale than Python releases. But since he passed it to the
pypa umbrella I don't think he's been keeping the two in sync. I've
copied him in case I'm completely wrong on this.

Personally if we now have a standalone launcher MSI, I'd like to
discontinue the external one completely, and officially publish the
standalone launcher MSI on python.org as a service for users of older
Pythons. There seems little reason to maintain 2 repos if we don't
have to. We could merge in changes from the external repo before
discontinuing it, but I'm not sure how controversial that would be
(for example, would it need a PEP to include the 2 new extensions?)

Paul