"Moore, Paul" wrote:
It would be nice, if the wininst installer would allow even more flexibility, e.g. allow setting the install directory (this would then have to generate a .pth file to properly setup the Python path),
Not necessarily. All I care about is that I absolutely will not accept the default of putting modules in the Python executable directory. I feel that this is completely wrong, and needs change. There is a perfectly respectable Lib/site-packages directory, but Python ignores it (on Windows). The fix is a 1-line change to site.py, which I understand is not done because of some form of policy issue, rather than for any technical reason (ie, Guido doesn't like it...)
I don't know why distutils installs in Python\Lib\ instead of e.g. Lib\site-packages\, but I do know that you override this option using setup.cfg, so that your particular installer installs in a different destination directory. The problem of course is that distutils default setting will become a standard and changing the location would only cause more confusion...
I have hacked site.py to override this. I want to override the default location where modules are installed, as well. I simply will not use an installer which dumps arbitrary modules in the Python executable directory.
The wininst installer is hackable, as it is basically an exe prepended onto a zip file, so I can unzip the distribution wherever I like. But I wish I didn't need to do this. OTOH, I don't want my Windows "add/remove programs" applet cluttered with loads of Python modules, either (which I believe is also something the wininst installer does). So personally, I would prefer to just have a zip which I could install myself...
Two questions - is the bdist_zip option functional (no time to try it just now)? And how can we persuade package authors to provide a bdist_zip version of their packages as well as an installer version?
There is no such thing as bdist_zip; bdist_dumb is probably what you meant and yes, it works the way you describe.
(Sorry - I HATE installers, and particularly so when I have no way of controlling or limiting what they do...)
Paul.
-- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Company & Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/