It seems that, regardless of whether I specify --symlinks or not, pyvenv always creates symlinks:

$ pyvenv-3.3 env 
$ tree env/
env/
|-- bin
|   |-- activate
|   |-- pydoc
|   |-- pysetup3
|   |-- python -> python3.3
|   |-- python3 -> python3.3
|   `-- python3.3 -> /home/antoine/opt/bin/python3.3
|-- include
|-- lib
|   `-- python3.3
|       `-- site-packages
`-- pyvenv.cfg

5 directories, 7 files

Try --no-symlinks.

$ pyvenv-3.3 --no-symlinks env
usage: venv [-h] [--system-site-packages] [--symlinks] [--clear] [--upgrade]
            ENV_DIR [ENV_DIR ...]
venv: error: unrecognized arguments: --no-symlinks


:-)

Following discussions on python-dev, the default is always to symlink, except on Windows (no support for true symlinks on XP and older) and Mac OS X (problems with framework builds). The --symlinks indicates, on those platforms where symlinks is not the default, to use symlinks anyway. This will most likely only be useful on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X with a non-framework build of Python.

> Following discussions on python-dev, the default is always to symlink,
> except on Windows (no support for true symlinks on XP and older) and
> Mac OS X (problems with framework builds). The --symlinks indicates,
> on those platforms where symlinks is not the default, to use symlinks
> anyway. This will most likely only be useful on Windows Vista, Windows
> 7 and Mac OS X with a non-framework build of Python.

Ok, then it might be nice to make the usage string (which is printed
with pyvenv --help) clearer.

> Ok, then it might be nice to make the usage string (which is printed
with pyvenv --help) clearer.

Fair point, I'll update the help text to be clearer.

New changeset 9c345b4bd97e by Vinay Sajip in branch 'default':
Closes #15281, #15283: Don't make venv scripts executable, but copy source mode instead, and provide better help for pyvenv.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/9c345b4bd97e

> Following discussions on python-dev, the default is always to symlink,
> except on Windows (no support for true symlinks on XP and older) and

In this case couldn't symlinks be automatically used on Windows Vista or newer?

> In this case couldn't symlinks be automatically used on Windows Vista or newer?

It seems simpler if the default behaviour is the same on all Windows flavours - you can specify --symlinks if you're on Windows Vista or later.

It's simpler but is it better this way? I doubt. I think we should take advantage of symlinks whenever we can and only fallback to copying if they are not available.