Installing latest python also changes the default python3 symlink

[dpetka2001]

First time rtx user, so please bear with me if I understood something wrong. On my system python3 -V gives version 3.10.6. After trying to install latest python version with rtx by doing rtx install python@latest, it installs 3.11.3 but also seems to change to that version for the python3 symlink. If I try python3 -V afterwards it gives 3.11.3 instead of 3.10.6 like before rtx installation. Is this how it's supposed to work? I thought that it would just install latest version without changing the python3 symlink as well. Thus when I would like to switch between the 2 versions, I would do rtx use or rtx use -g accordingly if I wanted a global or local to a directory configuration. Am I missing something maybe from my understanding or is this the intended behavior? Maybe I should configure something differently, so that it doesn't change the python3 symlink on its own when installing latest Python?

[jdx]

rtx doesn't "change symlinks", please read the beginner's guide to understand what rtx does and what it is used for.

[dpetka2001]

So if I install python@latest it makes new binaries in installs/python/latest/bin and also new python3 symlink in that directory which points to the python binary installed in that directory. The guide also mentions that rtx overrides any binaries that are on the system. So, is there no way for the 2 to co-exist? I would like for the python3 system binary to take precedence over the rtx python3 version and only use the rtx version when i do rtx use python@3.11 in a directory. Is that something that doesn't align with rtx's philosophy? Until now i kept the system python intact (3.10) and only used other versions (3.11) in a virtualenv, so as to not break any python dependencies the system might need.

[jdx]

it sounds like maybe rtx shell is what you want instead of rtx use

[dpetka2001]

Thank you for your response. I will fiddle with it to see if it meets my needs and try to become more familiar with rtx and how I might have to adjust my workflow.