[Distutils] WinNT and distutils

[Greg Ward]

On 28 January 2000, Fred L. Drake, Jr. said:
>   As Guido pointed out at IPC8, distutils is most valuable if it
> doesn't need to be included with the packages that use it and doesn't
> need to be installed separately.  So it's really not "there" until 1.6 
> anyway.  Drop support for 1.5.2 and we're in good shape.
>   Got that, Greg (Ward)?  ;)

Yeah, I've been (slowly, quietly) moving towards that position anyways.
Using all sorts of 1.6 features would make it a bit hard to develop,
test, and debug the Distutils -- I guess at some point I'll have to
break down and start running the CVS version of Python instead of the
standard Red Hat RPM.  ;-)

What 1.6 features are really, absolutely necessary, though?  So far I
see only one:

  * registry access on Windows

Others?

Oh yeah, will the registry-access code that Robin Becker posted work
under 1.5.2 with Mark's extensions installed as well as under 1.6 with
built-in registry support?

        Greg