Allow a machine to configure the default Python interpreter version

Codespaces recently updated its base image to pre-install Jupyter along with a handful of ubiquitous ML libraries (e.g. pandas, torch, etc.). These libraries are installed into the context of the latest version of Python that’s installed (currently 3.10.4), which is also set as the default Python version in the user’s $PATH. Because of this, it would be ideal if when a user opened an *.ipynb file in a Codespace, that we could have it automatically select the kernel for the latest Python version. That way, there’s a seamless continuity between the terminal and notebooks, without the user needing to select a kernel manually, and potentially get confused.

For example, the following is a screenshot of what the kernel picker looks like in a Codespace, and it would be awesome if we could somehow configure the environment to pre-select Python 3.10.4 64-bit.

[lostintangent]

Yep this makes sense, and the changes I mentioned above are live in Codespaces.

Since Codespaces are ephemeral and meant to be used as project/task-specific environments, we chose to install Jupyter and ML libs in the global installation, since that allowed users to have a “zero config” onboarding experience, without needing to deal with virtual environments. We might evolve that over time, but this was also the recommendation by @brettcannon.

[karrtikr]

These libraries are installed into the context of the latest version of Python that’s installed (currently 3.10.4), which is also set as the default Python version in the user’s $PATH

As I understand the ask is to select the default Python version on $PATH automatically, in that case this is a dup of https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/19818. Let me know if that’s not the case and we can reopen the issue.