python3.2m installed as (additional) binary

[andrew cooke]

Hi,

I just downloaded, built and altinstalled Python3.2 on Linux x64. I noticed that in /usr/local/bin I have two identical (says diff) binaries called Python3.2 and Python3.2m. Is this expected? I can find very little reference to them apart from a short discussion in python-dev where someone asks if users will be confused by this and Barry Warsaw replies saying that they won't see them (well, I do!).

All I did was the usual ./configure; make; sudo make altinstall

So is this a bug?
Andrew

pl6 Python-3.2: ls -l /usr/local/bin/python3.2*
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 7368810 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 7368810 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1826 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m-config
pl6 Python-3.2: diff /usr/local/bin/python3.2 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m
pl6 Python-3.2:

 

[Tom Zych]

I just downloaded, built and altinstalled Python3.2 on Linux x64. I noticed that in /usr/local/bin I have two identical (says diff) binaries called Python3.2 and Python3.2m. Is this expected? I can find very little reference to them apart from a short discussion in python-dev where someone asks if users will be confused by this and Barry Warsaw replies saying that they won't see them (well, I do!).

All I did was the usual ./configure; make; sudo make altinstall

So is this a bug?

pl6 Python-3.2: ls -l /usr/local/bin/python3.2*
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 7368810 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 7368810 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1826 2011-02-27 13:03 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m-config
pl6 Python-3.2: diff /usr/local/bin/python3.2 /usr/local/bin/python3.2m
pl6 Python-3.2:

It looks like they're hard links of each other. Try:
ls -li /usr/local/bin/python3.2*

Are the inode numbers the same?

I suspect the "m" name is what gets built and the "no m" is an alias for
backwards-compatibility. Not sure why they did the "m", though.

 

[Tom Zych]

I suspect the "m" name is what gets built and the "no m" is an alias for
backwards-compatibility. Not sure why they did the "m", though.

Ah, this may be it:

http://bugs.python.org/issue9807

Search for "build flag". Apparently the "m" indicates that it was
compiled with a nonstandard compiler option, or some such; maybe
something to do with being on a 64-bit platform. The makefile or
configure log may shed some light.