[Distutils] Draft of new setuptools installation instructions

[Paul Moore]

On 10/3/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for any feedback people might have, on the installation process
> itself or on the directions.  Some particular areas of question/concern:

Looks fine for Windows.

> * Should we make more effort to create a usable command-line experience on
> Windows?  Perhaps use a post-install script to register easy_install so it
> works from "Start/Run", with an automatic pause to prevent the opened
> console window from closing when it finishes running?  Should we include
> optional registration for the ``.egg`` extension so downloading or
> double-clicking an egg installs it?

IMHO, no. Your particular suggestions would annoy me immensely, but
I'm sure others would like them (and would hate whatever I'd prefer).
There is no solution that will please everyone (or even a majority, in
all probability). Better to do what python itself does, and *not* try
to integrate too closely, leaving it to command line users to
customize their own environment.

> * The new install procedure bypasses firewall issues for installing
> setuptools itself, but doesn't do anything about the issue for packages
> that have dependencies.  Is there anything else that can be done about that?

I've not worked with enough such packages to know the answer to this
without asking, but is there an incantation which says "check
dependencies, if all are present install, otherwise list the missing
dependencies and stop". If that's available, users can manually
download what they need. That is minimal, but effective - in my view,
simplicity is a virtue here.

Paul.