>> I just don't think your use case of "I want to capture the Python from Xcode in my dev env so it's resilient to changes and upgrades" is something anyone wants (or should want) to do.

> Then you are wrong. Simple as that. I’m describing a very real scenario.

>> Do you really want to ship on that version?

> Holy moly, is it really that hard to understand the difference between wanting and having to? For the use case, and older version in a consistent place which is easy to install is the best solution.

Tone is hard on the internet, but I'm honestly trying to understand your use case. The way I understand it now is "I want to be able to develop Python programs locally using only Xcode's Python." I'm still not sure why you want to (generally when people ship Python programs they bundle a runtime) but let's set that to the side. For this use case, I don't understand why symlinks don't work for you. Xcode installs to versioned folders so you can have multiple Xcode installs side by side, that way new versions won't overwrite things. I'm obviously not an expert here though; am I missing something?