On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 04:50:25PM -0700, seberino@spawar.navy.mil wrote:
3. Will bdist_rpm install JUST pyc files (bytecode)??? Will sdist install JUST py (source) files??? What about installing source and bytecode?? (py and pyc)?? How do that and is THAT a good idea???
Binary distributions (bdist) means that C extensions are compiled and the user installing them doesn't need a C compiler. .py files are also installed, and may or may not be compiled into .pyc files, depending on the bdist format. Source distributions require users to run "setup.py install" to install them, and if the package contains C extensions and the user doesn't have a C compiler, they'll be unable to install the package. For packages consisting of only Python code, there's only a slight difference between source and binary distributions from the end user's point of view. C extensions make the difference greater; in particular, few Windows users will have a compiler. --amk