Here is a revision of the patch, so that py-compile-en.sh test passes.
Here's another attempt at the patch, calling $PYTHON -V instead of using
the name of $0 to decide if it's really Python. Wdyt?
The result is that $PYTHON can be set to anything at all and py-compile
will succeed. Since the goal is to support "disabling" via PYTHON=:.
I can't see how to reasonably support the previous behavior of PYTHON=:
succeeding and PYTHON=false failing, unless we make a special case for :
(and true and ...?), which seems undesirable. Do you (or anyone) think
we need to worry about this, or is it ok for py-compile to now succeed
with any value of $PYTHON? I worry people assumed the previous bizarre
behavior in their Makefiles.
Thanks,
Karl
diff --git a/lib/py-compile b/lib/py-compile
index 9659beca6..d68a4431e 100755
--- a/lib/py-compile
+++ b/lib/py-compile
@@ -33,6 +33,15 @@ fi
me=py-compile
+# People apparently set PYTHON=: and expect the result to be true.
+# This means setting PYTHON=false will also exit true, but what can we do?
+# For the same reason, we output to stdout instead of stderr. Bizarre.
+if $PYTHON -V 2>/dev/null | grep -i python; then :; else
+ echo "$me: Invalid python executable (according to -V): $PYTHON"
+ echo "$me: Python support disabled"
+ exit 0
+fi
+
usage_error ()
{
echo "$me: $*" >&2
diff --git a/t/py-compile-env.sh b/t/py-compile-env.sh
index 564fb98c6..fc82df43a 100644
--- a/t/py-compile-env.sh
+++ b/t/py-compile-env.sh
@@ -31,7 +31,13 @@ chmod a+x my-py
mkdir sub1
cd sub1
-PYTHON=false ../py-compile foo.py && exit 1
+# This should succeed and do nothing.
+PYTHON=: ../py-compile foo.py
+ls | grep . && exit 1
+
+# This command will also succeed, since we intentionally allow PYTHON to
+# be set to anything.
+PYTHON=false ../py-compile foo.py
ls | grep . && exit 1
PYTHON='echo GrEpMe AndMeToo' ../py-compile foo.py
compile finished at Mon Feb 3 10:04:09 2025
