[Distutils] Configuration etc.

[David Ascher]

On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Konrad Hinsen wrote:

> It seems to me that the whole DistUtils project divides
> nicely into two almost independent subunits:
> 
> - building binaries from source code
> 
> - installing Python modules and binary extension modules
> 

I would like to add another, somewhat win/mac-centric twist: 

  - making installers of Python & add-ons.

More specifically: i'm working on a program which is going to use Python,
Tk, PIL, OpenGL, NumPy, Pmw, and some custom code.  I'd like to be able to
make a single installer which installed all of those parts, not
necessarily frozen.

For all of the extensions above, I think that I can generate .WSE files
(the input to the WISE installer maker, free for Python extensions) which
do the job, starting with Python's, and assuming I or someone else can
figure out how to do the Tk bit.  

I'm sure this kind of thing would be useful in the mac world as well,
where even fewer users have compilers.

Wouldn't this sort of thing be useful in Unix as well, in some
distribution models? I think so, judging from the efforts of the Digital
Creations folks and their binary porting kit for Zope
(from http://www.zope.org/Download/Contrib).

Note that this is a different kind of distribution -- it's a distribution
of applications for users, not of extensions for Python programmers.

--david