3.9 IDLE documentation.

[cvhorie]

BPO	41968
Nosy	@terryjreedy, @E-Paine
Superseder	bpo-31329: Add idlelib module entry to doc

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2020-10-08.00:07:11.369>
created_at = <Date 2020-10-07.13:54:09.349>
labels = ['expert-IDLE', 'type-feature', '3.10', 'docs']
title = '3.9 IDLE documentation.'
updated_at = <Date 2020-10-11.13:51:59.311>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/cvhorie'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-10-11.13:51:59.311>
actor = 'epaine'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2020-10-08.00:07:11.369>
closer = 'terry.reedy'
components = ['Documentation', 'IDLE']
creation = <Date 2020-10-07.13:54:09.349>
creator = 'c.v.horie'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 41968
keywords = []
message_count = 7.0
messages = ['378161', '378173', '378202', '378256', '378259', '378265', '378435']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'docs@python', 'epaine', 'c.v.horie']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '31329'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue41968'
versions = ['Python 3.10']

[cvhorie]

https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html
I am trying to sort out why a new installation of 3.9 onto Win10 64bit fails to associate a .py file type with IDLE. {hint - there is no idle.exe. installed - Why?}. 2.7, 3.6 and 3.8 worked fine.
The documentation gives no indication of the source format of "IDLE", where it might be found, what it calls etc - only how it is used.
Some indication/link to the underlying software structure should be included in the documentation.
PS thank you for all the other work involved.

[E-Paine]

I am not touching the issue nosy and components for now but suspect this is a Windows installation issue. As you said, there is no idle.exe file and instead file association is done through a idle.bat file found at Lib/idlelib/idle.bat. I have a few of questions that I would appreciate if you could answer to give some more context:

• What behaviour is incorrect? Is it that double clicking doesn't launch python.exe or there is no "edit with IDLE" entry in the right-click menu?
• Did you install it for different users compared to the other versions (all users / admin vs. just for this user)
• Do you have any other Python versions installed simultaneously with 3.9?

I agree it may be nice to give a brief overview on IDLE's "behind-the-scenes" though I am slightly confused why you raised this issue as a documentation issue.

[terryjreedy]

I agree that the doc needs more, but I am closing this as a duplicate of bpo-31329, which is specifically doc about starting IDLE. You can still answer Paine's questions here if you want.

File association: IDLE is not Python. It is one of many Python-oriented editors and IDEs. .py files are and by default should be associated for running with something that runs the file with python.exe. On Windows, this is done via C:/Windows/py.exe. The default version for double clicking is determined by a checkmark in the installer.

The Windows installer does associate .py files with IDLE for editing: rt click, edit with IDLE ....

idle.exe is not needed for starting idle.

I don't know what you mean by 'source format'. IDLE is written in Python. The directory structure is mostly implementation detail not relevant to using IDLE. File are described in idlelib/README.txt. This might be mentioned in the doc.