What does this cookbook do?

[onknows]

I was considering using this cookbook to install Python. But this made me realize there is probably more to it than I thought.

My thought was that python should be a command and not a command not found. To achieve this I applied poise-python cookbook and found that python was still not a command.

What does this cookbook do? It installs a Python runtime environment but what i a python runtime environment actually? How is it different from python command?

When I apt-get python on Ubuntu it gives me a python command. What can I do with a python runtime created with poise-python?

[coderanger]

There is no difference, but there are more ways than apt-get install python to install Python. For example, you might want to install from a different package, or use the portable-pypy tarballs, or install on a platform that doesn't use apt. The python_runtime resource abstracts the install process for all of those different options.