Hi Chris, On 04/15/2012 09:07 PM, Chris Lambacher wrote:
If I were telling a new Windows Python user what to do to get started, I would tell them to use easy_install because easy_install will pick up both installers and binary eggs and do the right thing with those and virtualenvs.
Agreed.
pip on Windows is a decent into misery. Giving Windows users reliable instructions on how to set up an appropriate compiler is fraught with peril. Probably most new Python users on Windows have never done C or set up a build environment; they probably don't even know what a compiler is or why they would need one. Even if they do know about compilers, getting the right Visual Studio version(express or otherwise) is a bit of a problem because Python does not use the current version of VS and which version you need changes with Python versions. If you get a working compiler, then you need to track down the C dependencies of the module you are building.
The click installers are going to be a problem if you do any recommendation of virtualenv. The recent (or soon to be released) versions have --no-site-packages as the default and so, the click installers (that will install to global site-packages directory) won't show up without the user explicitly giving whatever the arg is for --with-site-packages when the virtualenv is created.
The argument is spelled --system-site-packages.
I heard rumours of plans for pip to support binary packages of some kind on Windows, but I don't know the details or current status of that.
Support for installing binary packages on Windows has been a "patches welcome" situation for as long as I've used pip (3-4 years?) - all that's lacking is someone motivated to provide a good patch :-) Carl