[SPARK-9705] [DOC] fix docs about Python version

cc JoshRosen

Author: Davies Liu <davies@databricks.com>

Closes #8245 from davies/python_doc.

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/docs/programming-guide.md b/docs/programming-guide.md
index ae712d6274..982c5eabe6 100644
--- a/docs/programming-guide.md
+++ b/docs/programming-guide.md
@@ -85,8 +85,8 @@ import org.apache.spark.SparkConf
 
 <div data-lang="python"  markdown="1">
 
-Spark {{site.SPARK_VERSION}} works with Python 2.6 or higher (but not Python 3). It uses the standard CPython interpreter,
-so C libraries like NumPy can be used.
+Spark {{site.SPARK_VERSION}} works with Python 2.6+ or Python 3.4+. It can use the standard CPython interpreter,
+so C libraries like NumPy can be used. It also works with PyPy 2.3+.
 
 To run Spark applications in Python, use the `bin/spark-submit` script located in the Spark directory.
 This script will load Spark's Java/Scala libraries and allow you to submit applications to a cluster.
@@ -104,6 +104,14 @@ Finally, you need to import some Spark classes into your program. Add the follow
 from pyspark import SparkContext, SparkConf
 {% endhighlight %}
 
+PySpark requires the same minor version of Python in both driver and workers. It uses the default python version in PATH,
+you can specify which version of Python you want to use by `PYSPARK_PYTHON`, for example:
+
+{% highlight bash %}
+$ PYSPARK_PYTHON=python3.4 bin/pyspark
+$ PYSPARK_PYTHON=/opt/pypy-2.5/bin/pypy bin/spark-submit examples/src/main/python/pi.py
+{% endhighlight %}
+
 </div>
 
 </div>