[Distutils] Bdist_notsodumb

[Paul Prescod]

I've got this idea and I'd like to have it either shot-down or verified.
The idea is that instead of supporting more and more binary dist
packaging mechanisms, we would distribute Python extensions as a
zipfile. (I choose zip because Python has a standard zipfile module but
I don't think it has a tar module)

In the root directory of the zipfile would be an "install.py". That
would install the module in the Python distribution that it is launched
from. Installing the module would consist of unzipping and running
"install.py". Because install.py would always be in the same place, the
downloading and installing of Python extensions could be automated. The
procedure would be identical on all platforms. The majority of the
infrastructure used by the install scripts could live in Python itself.

In summary, why wouldn't we define a binary structure for Python
extensions rather than worrying about the vagaries of each platform's
package mechanism?

 Paul Prescod