How can I have different 2.7.x versions in parallel on Windows? The installer overwrites older versions even if installed into a different directory.
Background:
I'd like to have more than one version of CPython 2.7 installed on a Windows machine for continuous integration purposes. I can do that without problems on Linux and OSX already.
Having different 2.x and 3.x versions in parallel works fine, but due to the longlivety of Python 2.7 (initial release in 2010) the 2.7.x versions aren't all that compatible among each other, and users don't update all that frequently.
After lots of searching I think it is safe to say that BrenBarn's comment answers it best:
Portable Python versions can be installed in parallel even if they have the same first two digits. The drawbacks are that the available versions lack behind quite a bit and there are only available in 32-bit (which makes perfect sense, they are made for portability after all).