Out of the box xonsh will not execute within a Python Virtual Env on Windows 10

[eruber]

After downloading and unarchiving xonsh-master.zip, and then following the "Windows Install from Source" directions at https://xon.sh/windows.html, the following (abbreviated) console output was generated;

python -m venv TEST_XONSH
TEST_ONSH\Scripts\activate.bat
(TEST_ONSH) > pip list
Package Version

---

pip 10.0.1
setuptools 39.0.1

(TEST_XONSH) xonsh-master>python
Python 3.7.1 (v3.7.1:260ec2c36a, Oct 20 2018, 14:57:15) [MSC v.1915 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

^Z

(TEST_ONSH) > pip install prompt-toolkit
(TEST_ONSH) > pip list
Package Version

---

pip 19.1.1
prompt-toolkit 2.0.9
setuptools 39.0.1
six 1.12.0
wcwidth 0.1.7
(TEST_ONSH) > cd xonsh-master
(TEST_ONSH) xonsh-master> python setup.py install
<<much output deleted, which I have if questions arise.>>
(TEST_XONSH) > xonsh-master>xonsh
xonsh-master\xonsh_amalgam_.py:16197: UserWarning: prompt_toolkit is not available, using readline instead.
"prompt_toolkit is not available, using " "readline instead."
Skipping setup. Because no readline implementation available.
Please install a backend (readline, prompt-toolkit, etc) to use
xonsh interactively.
See xonsh/xonsh#1170

After looking at xonsh code and sampling sys.path at runtime, I determined what the problem and fix was...

The reason this error happens is because the xonsh.bat file is making decisions about what Python interpreter to use; namely the one in C:\Windows\py.exe (who put that there??) rather than the one in the defined virtual env.

Replacing xonsh.bat with just the single line:
python -m xonsh %*
fixes the problem; so does just invoking the xonsh module like this:

(TEST_XONSH) xonsh-master>python -m xonsh --version
xonsh/0.9.6

My expectations were that the application would do nothing to automatically select a python interpreter; since the virtual environment creation and "activation" takes care of all those details so the virtual environment is usable.

I am looking forward to playing with xonsh. Thanks for working so hard, writing so much code, and releasing it for others to use!!

For community

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[scopatz]

Thanks for opening this @eruber - PRs very welcom here!