Re: ✘python shebang, yet again

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Fred!

On Thu, 24 Sep 2020 19:50:36 -0700 (PDT)
Fred Wright <fw@fwright.net> wrote:

> 3) A relative path (though this would be pretty weird).

Yes, weird.

> 3) Otherwise (i.e. it contains os.path.sep but doesn't start with
> it), then consider it to be a relative path.  Convert it to an
> absolute path and use it as in #2.

As you say, that is weird, but common with cross-building.  In that case
you do not want the cross-build python in the shebang.

If someone wants a wwird case they can use python_shebang.

> > (The point of using a full path is to bind to a particular python
> > build at gpsd configure/build time, rather than having it end up
> > using one at runtime that may or may not have been changed.  But
> > I've said that before, and the PEP people don't value that
> > property.)  
> 
> Remember that PEP 394 was written to address the specific issue of
> Python 2 vs. Python 3 and programs that would only work with one,

Ah, no.  I suggest you re-read it.  Especially CPython section:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/#application-to-the-cpython-reference-interpreter

> and
> didn't consider such issues as third-party libraries and their
> locations at all.

A agree, there are other PEPs for those issues.

> Nevertheless, it does state that more specific
> versioning is preferable to less specific versioning,

I read it exactly the opposite that you do.

> so if one
> considers the full absolute path to the Python interpreter as the
> most specfic versioning of all, then that should actually be
> considered ideal by PEP 394. :-)

If so, then you would expect them to say so, or have one example of that.
It does not.

> Using the absolute path is the most robust approach, since it defends 
> against future changes to PATH and/or the symlink that something like 
> 'python3' probably refers to. 

And breaks things like moving from /bin to /usr/bin, and back, which
some distros do.

> There's an enhancement I've used in
> another context to make this more convenient, where prefixing the
> target_python argument with '@' causes it to use the target python's
> sys.executable for the shebang.

This was already discussed at length NTPsec.  It breaks a lot of
distributions.  It breaks Gentoo.

RGDS
GARY
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Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
        gem@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588

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