Strong and weak points of distutils 1 Was: [Distutils] thoughtson distutils 1 & 2

[Moore, Paul]

From: Mark W. Alexander [mailto:slash at dotnetslash.net]
> In my view of the perfect world, the OS tools would deal with
> dependencies based on the metadata provided by the binary packages.
[...]
> Since Windows does not provide that ability natively, then Distutils
> need not try to extend Windows to include it.

That (including the trimmed bit) sounds exactly right to me. 

> This is why I believe the core value of Distutils is the simple
> management of package metadata. Building, installing or making binary
> packages are all actions based on the supplied metadata. How the
> result is integrated into any particular platform should be as native
> as possible for each platform.

Exactly. And (IMHO) that is the key strength of the bdist_wininst
command - it fits in with the existing Windows infrastructure (limited
though that may be). I've no experience with distutils on non-Windows
platforms, but I'd instinctively look for a platform-native bdist option
(bdist_rpm, bdist_dpkg, whatever).

Even if I have a pure Python package, I always go via bdist_wininst and
an OS-level install. I *never* do python setup.py install. Just because
of the OS integration. (And this is from someone with an instinctive
mistrust of installers, due to long experience with buggy Windows
installers for other packages!)

(On Windows, it may be worth adding a bdist_msi command, to use the MS
installer infrastructure, but I don't personally know if that adds
enough value to justify the work involved. I'm not familiar enough with
the MSI format).

Paul.


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