Michael Foord wrote: >The launcher program could thrive without *having* to be part of a >standard Python install. Offering it separately makes sense even if it >*is* included. If we do both then users can vote with their feet.
A launcher might be difficult to integrate into the Python installer, as there can, by definition, only be one. What if I install a new version of Python and then uninstall it? Will the launcher be uninstalled as well? Will it be reverted to a previous version, and if so, which? I am actually working on such a launcher for myself right now. The main problem I am trying to solve is doubleclicking a .py or .pyw file and having it run in the Python version it is intended for. From the command line, I want "something.py arg1 ... argn" to do the right thing as well. I don't care much for fixing "python something.py arg1 ... argn", as I personally rarely need to pass options to Python. I may look into that later, though. My launcher parses the first line of the script for something that starts with "#!" and contains "python<something>". It tries to match that with a list of installed Python versions obtained from the registry, falling back to a configurable default if no such line is found. As to performance of such a solution: I'm writing this in Python (2.5, as its MSVCRT is easier to include in an exe) and converting it to an executable with py2exe. The extra startup time is manageble on my system. Using Python to write this in makes it much easier to experiment with adding features. Once the dust has settled I may attempt to rewrite it in C. Anyway, I believe that such a launcher should not be part of Python itself at first; an external program makes it easier to figure out what works well. As to adding Python to the Windows path: I'd be mildly annoyed if the installer offered that option, and seriously annoyed if it defaulted that option to "yes". Gertjan. _______________________________________________ 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
