I mentioned PYTHONROOT\Script because of the distribute package, which adds PYTHONROOT\Script\easy_install.exe.<div><br></div><div>My mistake if \Script is created by distribute and not Python. Then my beef is with distribute for not adding its binaries to PATH--how else would I use easy_setup if not in a terminal?<br clear="all">
<div><br></div>Cheers,<div><br></div><div>Andrew Pennebaker</div><div><a href="http://www.yellosoft.us" target="_blank">www.yellosoft.us</a></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Brian Curtin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian.curtin@gmail.com">brian.curtin@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 23:04, Andrew Pennebaker <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andrew.pennebaker@gmail.com" target="_blank">andrew.pennebaker@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Please have the Windows installers add the Python installation directory to the PATH environment variable.</blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>The <a href="http://bugs.python.org" target="_blank">http://bugs.python.org</a> bug tracker is a better place for feature requests like this, of which there have been several over the years. This has become a hotter topic lately with several discussions around the community, and a PEP to provide some similar functionality. I've talked with several educators/trainers around and the lack of a Path installation is the #1 thing that bites their newcomers, and it's an issue that bites them before they've even begun to learn.</div>
<div class="im">
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>Many newbies dive in without knowing that they must manually add C:\PythonXY to PATH. It's yak shaving, something perfectly automatable that should have been done by the installers way back in Python 1.0.<br clear="all">
<div><br></div><div>Please also add PYTHONROOT\Scripts. It's where cool things like easy_install.exe are stored. More yak shaving.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>A clean installation of Python includes no Scripts directory, so I'm not sure we should be polluting the Path with yet-to-exist directories. An approach could be to have packaging optionally add the scripts directory on the installation of a third-party package.</div>
<div class="im">
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div>The only potential downside to this is upsetting users who manage multiple python installations. It's not a problem: they already manually adjust PATH to their liking.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>"Users who manage multiple python installations" is probably a very, very large number, so we have quite the audience to appease, and it actually is a problem. We should not go halfway on this feature and say "if it doesn't work perfectly, you're back to being on your own". I think the likely case is that any path addition feature will read the path, then offer to replace existing instances or append to the end.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I haven't yet done any work on this, but my todo list for 3.3 includes adding some path related features to the installer.</div></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div>