What use cases would this be useful for? Presumably most developers are using tox or virtualenvwrapper to control their python version

I wrote about this in the FAQ (https://github.com/qw3rtman/p#faqs), but I'll reiterate the main use case below.

p is for the average Python developer who just needs to work with a different version of Python. Suppose one wants to start using the latest development release of Python; they just run `p latest` and p will take care of the rest.

`p` is a wrapper that handles and manages everything for you, simplifying the process for those who aren't familiar with tox or virtualenvwrapper. :)

Came here to ask the same question. Under archlinux python 3 is the default, which breaks scripts who don't specify that their are python 2 only and start with #!/usr/bin/python and not #!/usr/bin/python2. But even there as user I don't see the need for this tool.

Commented above as a reply to @calpaterson; I'll paste the same comment below.

> I wrote about this in the FAQ (https://github.com/qw3rtman/p#faqs), but I'll reiterate the main use case below.

> p is for the average Python developer who just needs to work with a different version of Python. Suppose one wants to start using the latest development release of Python; they just run `p latest` and p will take care of the rest.

> `p` is a wrapper that handles and manages everything for you, simplifying the process for those who aren't familiar with tox or virtualenvwrapper. :)

At least Ubuntu can also switch the version of what "python" links to via setting a configuration.

How does this interact with pip?

At this point, p makes no attempt to manage pip versions. I have added this feature to the TODO and it will be implemented sometime in the future.

Thanks for the suggestion! :)