Suggest using the py launcher when installing Poetry globally on Windows

[johnthagen]

• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate.

Issue

I am starting to use Poetry and would like to try to improve some rough edges I have hit before recommending it to novice users.

On Windows, the official installation instructions state:

(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py -UseBasicParsing).Content | python -

And similar for the master branch:

(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://install.python-poetry.org -UseBasicParsing).Content | python -

The problem is that the most common way to install/invoke Python on Windows for launching is through the py launcher. Adding python to the PATH is a box that is unchecked by default. This means from an average user on Windows their first experience with trying to install Poetry the recommended way will be failure.

I recommend that the default instructions | py - or at the very least mention that you might have to do this prominently.

[abn]

Thanks for highlighting this. I'm not too familiar with the windows ecosystem to comment on how relevant this is.

Might be worth a doc update. A generic note that the python executable could be different with this as an example might be good. Happy to review PRs.

Source: https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/blob/master/docs/_index.md

[johnthagen]

I'm going to gather some data to make sure I can support this change.

I did a default installation of Python 3.10.4 from the official python.org download page on Windows 10.

• Note that by default the launcher (py) is installed.
• And by default python is not added to the PATH.

PS C:\Users\IEUser> python
python : The term 'python' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ python
+ ~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (python:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

PS C:\Users\IEUser> py
Python 3.10.4 (tags/v3.10.4:9d38120, Mar 23 2022, 23:13:41) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

In a customized installation:

"Add Python to the environment variables" is unchecked, so python remains not added to the PATH by default.

The Microsoft Store package, on the other hand, sadly does not install the py launcher, but does install python and python3 into the PATH.

• https://docs.python.org/3/using/windows.html#the-microsoft-store-package

[johnthagen]

I asked Steve Dower what his thoughts were on this

• https://discuss.python.org/t/microsoft-store-package-does-not-add-the-py-exe-launcher/538/10?u=johnthagen

[johnthagen]

According to Steve Dower, 95% of Windows users download from python.org, so let's target py as the primary installation method.

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