Python allows multiple versions of python installed to the same $PYTHON_HOME. The different installations use a different executable name to differentiate. For example, on my workstation, I have:

python2.5
python2.6
python2.7
python2
python3.2
python3
python

All of these have a PYTHON_HOME of /usr. python2 gives me the python2.7 installation. python3 and python both give me python 3.2.

When you create a virtualenv, you can specify which python executable you wish to use by passing the name of the executable with the -p option. Once you're in the activated virtualenv, then the 'python' command is whatever you specified with the -p at virtualenv creation time.

I'd expect this plugin to take the full path to the executable as an input instead of the PYTHON_HOME directory. the PYTHON_HOME can be determined programatically once you have the full path to the executable. For backwards compatibility, it would be fine to leave the PYTHON_HOME configuration and have an "advanced" section to specify the name and/or full path to the executable. That way, you can have several Python installations provided by your OS's package manager (ubuntu/debian fully support this in their repos) all with the same PYTHON_HOME, but different executable names for the different versions.

See also: make altinstall in the CPython sources.