Tim Peters wrote:
Jim seems mostly interested in Win32-only to me, and his concerns haven't been about the mechanics of distribution but about how-- regardless of tool --to create a bulletproof Python installation by hook or by crook.
Not exactly. I am interested in how to create a bullet-proof installation. But I am equally interested in Unix (especially Linux) and dislike the current dichotomy in the code base. Lately I have been more active in distribution via archive files. Part of the solution is an archive file format which is identical on Unix and Windows, and which can hold the Python library and packages as single files. For my own efforts on this see: ftp://ftp.interet.com/pub/pylib.html This is an archive file format similar to Gordon's format, although Gordon's work goes well beyond just file formats. I currently have fifth generation code for this format, and am adding features as suggested by Fredrik Lundt. I hope it gets considered as a candidate for a Python standard format.
Distutils hasn't talked about that at all (that I've seen, anyway);
Gordon, Greg Stein and I have discussed file formats before. I think it was on distutils. Anyway that was months ago. JimA