[Distutils] Distutils changes - end user requirements (Was: Deprecate MANIFEST.in)

[Paul Moore]

2009/4/9 David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp>:
> Paul Moore wrote:
>> If not, why do people distribute eggs rather than bdist_wininst
>> installers?
>
> For python only code, I can see one obvious reason: you can build one
> egg on your platform, and it is supposed to work everywhere. I may be
> wrong, but I don't think packagers who care about windows a lot would
> distribute eggs only. For numpy/scipy, some windows users do request
> eggs for numpy/scipy (which we do not provide for numpy/scipy).

The other reason I see is "easy_install handles the dependencies for
you". Which has the other irritating side effect that developers no
longer document dependencies on the package website...

I'm fairly sure I've seen packages which distribute Windows-specific
eggs, but no Windows installers. But offhand, I can't recall which.

Actually, a case in point (sort of) - setuptools itself provides
bdist_wininst installers for Python 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5. It does NOT
provide one for Python 2.6, just an egg file. Now, setuptools is a
pure-Python package, as far as I know, but this is certainly something
I've seen confusing people on this list ("When will there be a Python
2.6 installer for setuptools?") Actually, if setuptools *is*
pure-Python, why are any of these version-specific at all? Standard
bdist_wininst installers for Python packages are version independent.

Executive summary: It's a confusing mess :-(

Paul.