Py.exe not working after 3.11rc1 install

[barry-scott]

Bug report

I have a Windows 10 VM that I use to build extensions for python.

Previously I had 3.11a3 installed.

After installing both python 3.11rc1 32 and 64 bit versions the py command is not working. Here is what I see in cmd:

: 10:12:15.43 C:\Users\barry
: \\VM-WIN10\barry> py
No suitable Python runtime found
Pass --list (-0) to see all detected environments on your machine

: 10:12:18.43 C:\Users\barry
: \\VM-WIN10\barry> py -0
 -V:3.11          Python 3.11 (64-bit)
 -V:3.11-32       Python 3.11 (32-bit)
 -V:3.10          Python 3.10 (64-bit)
 -V:3.10-32       Python 3.10 (32-bit)
 -V:3.9           Python 3.9 (64-bit)
 -V:3.9-32        Python 3.9 (32-bit)
 -V:3.8           Python 3.8 (64-bit)
 -V:3.8-32        Python 3.8 (32-bit)
 -V:3.7           Python 3.7 (64-bit)
 -V:3.7-32        Python 3.7 (32-bit)
 -V:3.6           Python 3.6 (64-bit)
 -V:3.6-32        Python 3.6 (32-bit)
 -V:3.5
 -V:3.5-32
 -V:3.4
 -V:2.7
: 10:13:49.37 C:\Users\barry
: \\VM-WIN10\barry> type C:\Users\barry\AppData\Local\py.ini
[defaults]
python=3.10-64
python3=3.10-64

Your environment

• CPython versions tested on: python 3.11.0-rc1
• Operating system and architecture: windows 10

[pfmoore]

This seems to be a behaviour change - the default of "3.10-64" is no longer recognised. It's documented as valid here:

Furthermore it is possible to specify if a 32 or 64 bit implementation shall be requested by adding “-32” or “-64”.

@pablogsal should this be marked as a release blocker?

[mwichmann]

I had a dig through the current "whatsnew" page and there's no mention of this change, fwiw. I had also run into this issue - the launcher seems to have dropped the -64 suffix, so if you have a version pinned in your py.ini file that uses the -64 syntax, you get into this state where there seem to be no versions. From memory, this changed at the rc1 release.

[barry-scott]

By all means drop the need for the -64, but I think it must be supported for existing installations.
The error messages gives the user no clue what is wrong either.

[pablogsal]

@pablogsal should this be marked as a release blocker?

Hummmm, is not a bad crash but I think it may be important enough that should block the release. I will re-evaluate on release day if is not fixed, but for now it should be a release blocker.

Can someone bisect the problem to point to a specific commit?

[pfmoore]

Can someone bisect the problem to point to a specific commit?

Unlikely, as the py.exe in 3.11 is a complete rewrite, so it's more probable that this behaviour simply wasn't included in the new version. @zooba any thoughts?

[pfmoore]

Note, this seems to only apply to configured defaults in py.ini. Using py -3.10-64 at the command line works fine. This would suggest to me that while this is a regression, its impact is manageable.

[eryksun]

Currently the "-32" and "-64" suffixes are only implemented for the command line. They're not implemented for shebangs and not for the defaults in the "PY_*" environment variables or "py.ini" files. The "-32" suffix should work for newer 32-bit releases, which use the "-32" suffix in the registry key name. In this case, the launcher won't actually validate that the architecture is 32-bit, but that shouldn't be a problem.

In parseCommandLine() , suffixed version tags are handled by setting search->exclude32Bit ("-64") or search->only32Bit ("-32") and then ignoring the suffix by subtracting 3 from the tag length.

cpython/PC/launcher2.c

Lines 646 to 662 in 9e55685

	if (STARTSWITH(L"2") || STARTSWITH(L"3")) {
	// All arguments starting with 2 or 3 are assumed to be version tags
	search->tag = arg;
	search->tagLength = argLen;
	search->oldStyleTag = true;
	search->restOfCmdLine = tail;
	// If the tag ends with -64, we want to exclude 32-bit runtimes
	// (If the tag ends with -32, it will be filtered later)
	if (argLen > 3) {
	if (0 == _compareArgument(&arg[argLen - 3], 3, L"-64", 3)) {
	search->tagLength -= 3;
	search->exclude32Bit = true;
	} else if (0 == _compareArgument(&arg[argLen - 3], 3, L"-32", 3)) {
	search->tagLength -= 3;
	search->only32Bit = true;
	}
	}

Handling the suffix could be factored out into a common function. Alternatively, I think it could be moved into performSearch() as a post-processing step for old-style tags, after parseCommandLine(), checkShebang(), and checkDefaults() have been called.

[zooba]

Defaults picked up from the config files should probably be treated as old-style arguments if they don't contain a slash.

The -64 was dropped because it's too confusing in the presence of ARM64. I opposed adding -64 as a suffix because it seemed likely to become an issue, and was never part of PEP 514 tags anyway (unless someone chose it explicitly).

In this case, it's just the oldStyleTag field that needs to be set. But people should be able to set their defaults to any runtime - not just PythonCore - so we can't just set it all the time.

We should fix this one up. It's a pretty significant takeback. I'll take a look tonight