On 9/03/2011 5:05 PM, Glenn Linderman wrote:
Standard installation paths are accepted by about 99% of the users, so embedding standard installation paths can work well for that batch of users. Of course, Windows changes the standard path periodically, so that it different from versions prior to and including WinXP versus versions after WinXP. And they had no standard before WinNT (or if they did, few followed it). Your comment does point out a possible need for multiple standard installation paths just for different versions of Windows, though :(
The python installer ignores "Program Files" - as much as anything I'm concerned about the drive letter - IIUC, Python will default to installing on the system drive, which may not be C:
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Your premise that using a standard installation path in #@ restricts the script to be targeted to one machine is fallacious, so the conclusions are also.
Sorry - I should have said "some machines with Python installed by the installer". Contrast this to the option of looking up the registry and you have "all machines with Python installed by the installer". I'm not going to quibble about the percentages in the first category as I have no data to guide me, but I'm reasonably confident about the "all" in the second.
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The #! line is clearly is NOT "the only clue Windows needs to make it work automagically" or we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
Sorry - I should have been clear - I meant "the only clue a windows specific Python launcher needs".
> And
it is not at all clear if a Windows machine contains Jython, IronPython, and Cython which one should be launched by a launcher.
I think it is reasonably clear: it would be the same version which would be launched on most *nix systems. Are there any systems where "/usr/bin/python" would use Jython, for example?
You could, of course, argue that python-dev is only concerned with CPython, and the launcher can be specific to CPython, and that argument might carry the day, but the CPython registry lookup necessary to make that happen doesn't help the users of alternate implementations a bit, forcing each of them to implement their own launcher as well...
I'd have no problem with the Windows launcher supporting other implementations - I expect something like "/usr/bin/jython" would be reasonable. How we locate the installed jython is indeed an interesting problem, but I'd guess it is surmountable - especially if we can get the buy-in of these alternate implementations for their future releases.
#!/usr/bin/env python2.6 #@"C:\Program Files\Env.exe" ipy2.6.3.exe
As above, the C: assumes Windows is installed on C: - that may be common, but not universal. Further, a 64bit machine would probably want "\Program Files (x86)" (which is becoming more and more common)
in .py files and #!/usr/bin/env python2.6 #@"C:\Program Files\Env.exe" ipy2.6.3w.exe in .pyw files.
I'm slightly skeptical about that - .pyw files are surely rare on *nix systems and as we've discussed, pyw files are generally not meant to be cmd-line scripts. IOW, I'm skeptical scripts exist which are meant to work with '/usr/bin/env python2.6' on *nix and pythonw.exe on windows.
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So no matter what is done, it won't solve world hunger. Probably that's why Windows users have been left high and dry for years in this regard... there is no "system" Python on it, out of the box, so the only users are those that are smart enough to download and install and configure things, and those who use a Python embedded into an application, at the cost of a Python installation per application, because there has been no "system" Python, and because Windows users are not perceived to be capable of, or willing to bother with, downloading and installing various requisite dependencies. The resulting vacuum has been filled by people with different points of view, because there has been no technique implemented, none declared to be "best", and anarchy and variant workarounds have abounded.
I'm glad solving world hunger is out of scope for this :) I understand your position but my personal opinion is that simple support for #! is more desirable. I'd be happy to go with the consensus though...
Cheers, Mark _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
