/opt/local/bin/python2.5 as default MacPorts' "python" interpreter

[Anders F Björklund]

Guido Soranzio wrote:

> Currently there is no official "python" interpreter for MacPorts
> (in the past there was a link to python2.3 even when python24
> was installed, IIRC) but many Python programs (or their shebang lines)
> expect a "python" command in the PATH, otherwise Leopard's python2.5
> is picked from its symbolic link "/usr/bin/python" and they don't work
> correctly.

Or Tiger's python2.3 is picked, and it works even less correctly...
(or alternatively python2.5, from python.org and /usr/local/bin)

> This is the case, for example, of Sudoku and Chess in gnome-games.

And a lot of other ports have been patched, to avoid any use of the
"python" command directly (this has been something of a pain to do)

> I think that, similarly to the destroot phase of Tcl
>
> (ln -s ${prefix}/bin/tclsh8.5 ${destroot}${prefix}/bin/tclsh)
>
> an "/opt/local/bin/python" link should be created pointing to
> the 2.5 version, as MacPorts' "default" Python version.

The /opt/local/bin/python was leading to "python24", which was
the default MacPorts Python version. The decision was made to
move to python_select instead, and not have any default at all.

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2007-August/ 
002547.html

So currently the initial setup with python_select(8) is mandatory...
But I think it was a mistake to remove the default python version,
and we should probably upgrade python to 2.5 - and perl to 5.10 ?

--anders