[Distutils] Re: [Python-Dev] Killing off bdist_dumb

[Thomas Heller]

martin@v.loewis.de (Martin v. Loewis) writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:
> 
> > OK, but bdist_wininst feels fragile (especially when I see checkins of
> > a pile of binary gunk each time something has changed).  Zip files are
> > a lowest common denominator.
> 
> That was my impression also, but I regained trust when I understood
> that we actually do have the source for those binaries :-) see
> 

I have already explained several times where the source for
bdist_wininst lives, I wont do it again (unless someone needs it).
Maybe it could be moved over to the main python module someday.

Concerning the 'pile of binary junk' you see on the checkins list
each time it has to be recompiled (the bdist_wininst.py module contains
the windows exe stub compressed and base64-encoded literally in a large
string):

This was a design decision which could (and can) be questioned.  The
checkin messages are one side, the other side is this: it avoids
having a binary file (wininst.exe), which only can be created on
windows, in the CVS repository and in the distribution.
  
bdist_wininst installers *can* also be created on other systems
as long as they only contain pure Python code - although I've never
heard of someone actually doing this.

So, should the bdist_wininst source code be moved into the python
tree, maybe somewhere into PC, and the MSVC .dsw file extended to
build the thing, and wininst.exe as binary file go into the distutils
directory? Even if this would be done, I'd suggest to wait after the
separate distutils release which we have planned on distutils-sig.

Thomas