[Distutils] Binaries for Windows (Header installation)

Moore, Paul Paul.Moore@uk.origin-it.com
Fri Mar 30 03:08:02 2001


From: M.-A. Lemburg [mailto:mal@lemburg.com]
> I don't know why distutils installs in Python\Lib\ instead of
> e.g. Lib\site-packages\, but I do know that you override this
> option using setup.cfg, so that your particular installer
> installs in a different destination directory.

But that only works if you're using distutils to install. As was pointed
out, the installer doesn't (currently?) respect this setting. For modules
with complex dependencies (OpenGL, Numeric, wxWindows are examples) building
from scratch is often not a realistic option.

> The problem of course is that distutils default setting will
> become a standard and changing the location would only cause more
> confusion...

Exactly my point. Is the current distutils default the best standard? If
not, we should change it NOW, before the user base is too large to even
contemplate a change. If the distributed site.py doesn't support the
"obvious" place (site-packages), surely now is the time to lobby for the
change?

> There is no such thing as bdist_zip; bdist_dumb is probably what
> you meant and yes, it works the way you describe.

Thanks - sorry for the confusion. Thomas said that it currently uses
absolute paths rather than relative, which means it needs fixing. But
assuming it is fixed, would it get used? Would you distribute the mx utils
as a bdist_dumb file as well as the bdist_wininst one you currently supply?
Would others?

The package repository proposal may make this happen, by distributing the
job of building binary distributions. I don't know...

Paul.