/usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory

Checklist

• I'm reporting a broken site support issue
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2021.06.06
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar bug reports including closed ones
• I've read bugs section in FAQ

Verbose log

yoones:~$ whereis youtube-dl
youtube-dl: /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
yoones:~$ youtube-dl
/usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory

Description

OS: Debian 11.1

I have the following binaries installed:

• python2.7
• python3
• python3.9

The shebang of youtube-dl (#!/usr/bin/env python) does not work in this context since there is no executable file called python.

Suggested solution:

Have a shell script that acts as a launcher. This script could for instance embed a list of known python interpreters (python, python2.7, python3, ...) and use the first of the list that is present on the host.