Re: [PATCH 1/1] configure: prefer python's sphinx module

[Peter Maydell]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 at 20:09, John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> wrote:
> Using an explicit entry path script for sphinx can lead to confusing
> results: If the python binary belongs to a virtual environment, our
> configure script may still select a sphinx script that belongs to the
> system distribution packages.
>
> It is likely best to use python itself (whichever one the user provides)
> to resolve the sphinx script.

I'm not convinced. How do I find out which sphinx-build this
is actually going to use ? ("python3 -m sphinx" doesn't list a
path to anything.)

How do I use the system python but a venv sphinx-build? At the
moment I can easily do that with
  --sphinx-build=/home/petmay01/python-env/bin/sphinx-build
because scripts inside a venv have #! lines that make them
work without having to manually activate the venv. I don't
want to have to use some random non-system Python just
because I have a newer Sphinx.

Put another way, I don't think the fact that sphinx-build
happens to be implemented in Python means that we should
let the user's decision about which Python they want us to
use control which version of sphinx-build we should use.

thanks
-- PMM