[Distutils] Header installation

[Moore, Paul]

From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal@lemburg.com]
> > PS Do the installers butlt by distutils (bdist_wininst and 
> > the like) respect setup.cfg? If not, I believe they should.
> > Or at least, the installer should include a way for the end
> > user to specify an alternative install directory...
> 
> Hmm, the build commands do respect the settings in the setup.cfg file,
> but the installer itself doesn't.
> 
> It would be nice, if the wininst installer would allow even more
> flexibility, e.g. allow setting the install directory (this would
> then have to generate a .pth file to properly setup the Python path),

Not necessarily. All I care about is that I absolutely will not accept the
default of putting modules in the Python executable directory. I feel that
this is completely wrong, and needs change. There is a perfectly respectable
Lib/site-packages directory, but Python ignores it (on Windows). The fix is
a 1-line change to site.py, which I understand is not done because of some
form of policy issue, rather than for any technical reason (ie, Guido
doesn't like it...)

I have hacked site.py to override this. I want to override the default
location where modules are installed, as well. I simply will not use an
installer which dumps arbitrary modules in the Python executable directory.

The wininst installer is hackable, as it is basically an exe prepended onto
a zip file, so I can unzip the distribution wherever I like. But I wish I
didn't need to do this. OTOH, I don't want my Windows "add/remove programs"
applet cluttered with loads of Python modules, either (which I believe is
also something the wininst installer does). So personally, I would prefer to
just have a zip which I could install myself...

Two questions - is the bdist_zip option functional (no time to try it just
now)? And how can we persuade package authors to provide a bdist_zip version
of their packages as well as an installer version?

(Sorry - I HATE installers, and particularly so when I have no way of
controlling or limiting what they do...)

Paul.