Are the python3.1 symlinks still needed for Python 3.11?

[jtilly]

Comment:

I noticed that for Python 3.11, we're still creating python3.1 symlinks (that were introduced for Python 3.10):

python-feedstock/recipe/build_base.sh

Line 396 in 897a78b

ln -s ${PREFIX}/bin/python3.11 ${PREFIX}/bin/python3.1

python-feedstock/recipe/build_base.sh

Line 518 in 897a78b

ln -s "${PREFIX}/lib/python3.11" "${PREFIX}/lib/python3.1"

Are these (still) needed?

[vvzen]

Bumping this up since we're run into this recently while creating a conda pack env for python3.10 and it seems like a bug. Is this something that the previous PR missed, or is it intentional ?

[isuruf]

These symlinks are needed to support noarch packages with older conda. What's the issue with the symlink?

[vvzen]

Thanks for replying back! No particular issue, I bumped on this quirk using some internal tooling I can't share, but tied to the detection of the site-packages directory.

A repro could be:

$ conda create -n some-env python==3.10
$ conda activate some-env
$ conda install conda-pack==0.7.1

$ mkdir /tmp/conda-pack-symlink-issue && cd /tmp/conda-pack-symlink-issue
$ conda pack --name some-env
$ tar -xvf some-env.tar.gz

$ python3 -c "import glob, os, pprint; pprint.pprint(glob.glob(f'{os.getcwd()}/lib/python3*/site-packages'))"
['/tmp/conda-pack-symlink-issue/lib/python3.1/site-packages',
 '/tmp/conda-pack-symlink-issue/lib/python3.10/site-packages']

# If you repeat the same steps but ask for python==3.9 things look as expected:
$ python3 -c "import glob, os, pprint; pprint.pprint(glob.glob(f'{os.getcwd()}/lib/python3*/site-packages'))"
['/tmp/conda-pack-symlink-issue/lib/python3.9/site-packages']

Unless you know all of the history (documented in the relevant issues here and there on the conda/conda pack github), seeing a 3.1 pop in there can create confusion.

Of course, this is not a big deal at all and a workaround is a one line change - I was just curious if this backward compatibility "hack" is gonna disappear at some point, maybe in a major release of conda-pack ?

Thanks again!
V

[isuruf]

I was just curious if this backward compatibility "hack" is gonna disappear at some point, maybe in a major release of conda-pack ?

Not sure when it's going to be.

[ytausch]

The python3.1 symlinks break the Python extension of VSCode because it detects the Python version based on the interpreter file names: microsoft/vscode-python#22877

This is the relevant source code: getPythonVersionFromNearByFiles