Monday, July 11, 2011

A Python Launcher For Windows

Mark Hammond (author of pywin32 and long-time supporter of Python on Windows) has written PEP 397, which describes a new launcher for Python on Windows. Vinay Sanjip (author of the standard library logging module) has recently created an implementation of the launcher, downloadable from https://bitbucket.org/vinay.sajip/pylauncher/downloads

The launcher allows Python scripts (.py and .pyw files) on Windows to specify the version of Python which should be used, allowing simultaneous use of Python 2 and 3.

Windows users should consider downloading the launcher and testing it, to help the Python developers iron out any remaining issues. The launcher is packaged as a standalone application, and will support currently available versions of Python. The intention is that once the launcher is finalised, it will be included as part of Python 3.3 (although it will remain available as a standalone download for users of earlier versions).

Two versions of the launcher are available - launcher.msi which installs in the Program Files directory, and launchsys.msi which installs in Windows' System32 directory. (There are also 64-bit versions for 64-bit versions of Windows).

Some Details About the Launcher

The full specification of the behaviour of the launcher is given in PEP 397. To summarise the basic principles:

  • The launcher supplies two executables - py.exe (the console version) and pyw.exe (the GUI version).
  • The launcher is registered as the handler for .py (console) and .pyw (GUI) file extensions.
  • When executing a script, the launcher looks for a Unix-style #! (shebang) line in the script. It recognises executable names python (system default python), python2 (default Python 2 release) and python3 (default Python 3 release). The precise details can easily be customised on a per-user or per-machine basis.
  • When used standalone, the py.exe command launches the Python interactive interpreter. Command line switches are supported, so that py -2 launches Python 2, py -3 launches Python 3, and py launches the default version.

Simple Usage Instructions

When it is installed, the launcher associates itself with .py and .pyw scripts. Unless you do anything else, scripts will be run using the default Python on the machine, so you will see no change. One thing you might like to do, if you use the console a lot, is to add .py to your PATHEXT variable so that scripts don't get executed in a separate console.

To specify that a script must use Python 2, simply add:

#!/usr/bin/env python2

as the first line of the script. (This is a Unix-compatible form. If you don't need Unix compatibility, #!python2 will do).

If on the other hand, you want to specify that a script must use Python 3, add:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

as the first line.

You can also start the Python interpreter using any of the following commands:

# Default version of Python
py
# Python 2
py -2
# Python 3
py -3

For this to work, the py.exe executable must be on your path. This is automatic with the launchsys version of the installer, but the install directory (C:\Program Files\Python Launcher) must be added manually to PATH with launcher.msi.

Further Reading

The following email threads on python-dev cover some of the key discussions:

CPython 3.2.1 Released

On behalf of the python-dev team, release manager Georg Brandl has announced the final release of CPython 3.2.1. Windows installers and tarballs are available as of July 10, so please consider upgrading to this release.

The What's New document lists all of the new features in 3.2, and the Misc/NEWS file in the source lists each bug fixed.

If you find any issues with this release or any other, please report them to http://bugs.python.org/.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

3.2.1 Release Candidate 2 Released

Following up a big month of releases in June, the second release candidate of the 3.2.1 line is now ready. Since the first release candidate on May 15, over 40 issues have been fixed. We encourage everyone to test their projects with this candidate to get one last look before the final release of 3.2.1.

What's fixed?

I/O

#1195 spent a few years witout a fix, but a simple addition to clear errors before calling fgets solves the problem of interrupting sys.stdin.read() with CTRL-D inside of input(). The io system saw a cleanup in #12175 with the readall method with None being the return value on a read() which returns None, and a ValueError is now raised when a file can't be opened.

Although this isn't new for RC2, #11272 is an important 3.2.1 fix to input() on Windows - the fixing of a trailing \r. The issue has been reported many times over and affects a many people (distutils upload command anyone?), so hopefully 3.2.1 does the trick for you.

Windows

3.2.0 brought a new feature for Windows: os.symlink support. With that feature came #12084, os.stat was improperly evaluating Windows symlinks, so the inner workings of the various stat functions were corrected.

A user noticed that os.path.isdir was slow, and the fact that it relied on os.stat contributed to that, especially when evaluating symlinks (which are generally twice as slow as regular files). While os.path.isdir isn't anyone's performance bottleneck, it's called numerous times on interpreter startup so changing it in #11583 to use GetFileAttributes gives a tiny speedup to build on.

subprocess

Creating a Popen object with unexpected arguments was causing an AttributeError, but that was reported in #12085 and was fixed by the reporter. Due to a change in 3.2.0, Popen wasn't correctly handling empty environment variables, specifically the env argument. #12383 was created for the issue and was promptly fixed.

...and more!

For a full list of changes through 3.2.1 RC2, check out the change log and download it now!

As always, please report any issues you find to http://bugs.python.org. We appreciate your help in making great Python releases.