On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Barry Warsaw <ba...@python.org> wrote: > On Jul 27, 2011, at 12:19 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote: > >>Ok, apparently the decision to make hard links for executables dates at >>least back to: > > That still doesn't explain *why* hardlinks were originally chosen instead of > symlinks. In the absence of any other compelling argument against it, I think > they should all consistently be symlinks. I don't see any Ubuntu or Debian > (where /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.2) bug reports indicating any problems, and > I haven't experienced any issues with it personally.
I ought to remember why because I remember I was involved. (And I have a feeling that the change Antoine dug up was just a refactoring, moving an existing hard-link target to a different file. Because in my memory the hard link was my idea and I implemented it. But that change is Neil Schemenauer's.) But I can't. :-( The best I can come up with is that when it's a hard link, you can replace either "python" or "python2.1" with another version without disturbing the other. And I think it has something to do with altinstall vs. install. So it would mean that after first installing 2.1 (so python and python2.1 are the same file), and then alt-installing 2.1.1, the original 2.1 binary is still accessible as "python". But I don't know why you'd want that. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) _______________________________________________ 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
