To clarify your questions. I'm running windows and want to get things installed as quickly as possible (binaries++). * I went to the website and clicked on lxml 9.0.1 link in the news, saw that it was direct source download and canceled. * I scrolled down, scanning for some sort of binary version and clicked the "lxml at the Python cheeseshop" link. (Note: it wasn't immediately obvious that here is where binaries would be) * Saw that there was no windows binaries there. [Made assumption that there were no windows binaries available from the developers.] * Looked at where I got my previous version from my notes. It was from http://carcass.dhs.org/ and that site no longer exists. At this point I figured I'd have to go with doing it by source. * Downloaded lxml 9.0.1 from link in the news (I guess 9.0.2 news wasn't up yet) * python setup.py build:: src\lxml\etree.c(9) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'libxml/encod ing.h': No such file or directory error: command '"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\bin\cl.e xe"' failed with exit status 2 * Opened README.txt * Opened INSTALL.txt * Skipped down to "Installation on Windows" section as recommended in the first paragraph. * Read that it would be a hassle to compile :-( * Read that binaries are available on http://carcass.dhs.org/ :-) * Found that that site was down :-( [That was unhelpful, so I figured I'd try to get it to work myself] * Looked to xmlsoft.org to get lxml binaries. * Found that that distribution included includes and everything :-) * That distribution didn't have the xslt-config binary that the normal setup.py required. * Hacked away at the setup.py so it'd work. * Found that the distribution from xmlsoft.org had static binaries :-D (It was a _huge_ pain requiring my developers to download these extra dlls before) (Note: I have heard of python eggs, but haven't gotten around to reading about it yet. I'm not sure if it would have saved me some steps from above.) --
Note that due to my fault the installation documentation on the website was slightly up to date. I've updated it just now, so David, could you check whether this would've helped you getting unstuck trying to build lxml on windows?
Unfortunately the new instructions wouldn't have helped because I used the docs in the source distribution to try to figure out how to install it after not finding a windows binary.
If not, could you suggest how to modify it?
For the main page, you could change the news releases to something like this: lxml 0.9.2 (sourcelink, binarieslink) released (changes for 0.9.2)
Windows installer should be easy. But eggs? Is it possible to have a static egg and a non-static egg both? How would people choose? Should we switch to the static procedure on windows altogether? What do people think?
Having gone from the dll version installer to the static version installer, I can't say enough about how much easier it is to deploy the static version.
Perhaps David can provide a windows installer for 0.9.2 that includes the static libraries?
Sure, no problem. David