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

[Paul Moore]

2009/4/9 Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com>:
> 2009/4/9 Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com>:
>> Don't they? I have to admit that I'm baffled by how the features in
>> setuptools/eggs/easy_install all hang together. What about the magic
>> that creates executables from scripts? Entry points? Stuff like that.
>> Don't you need to use eggs to make them work?
>
> No....? Entry points work even if you have the source code in a tgz
> format and run setup.py install. The distribution format is not
> magical for that afaik.
>
>> So by what you're saying, eggs are a strict subset of
>> bdist_wininst, and so people should be distributing bdist_wininst
>> installers. But they aren't, so what gives?
>
> Nobody knows about it?

Possibly :-(

> But in any case, even if it would be a good idea to have every single
> Python package on the system listed in the Add/Remove programs list
> (Which I don't think it is, but that's a matter of taste, no logical
> arguments behind that), that would in practice mean that each and
> every package on PyPI must have a wininstaller, even if it is a
> pure-python package. That doesn't seem realistic to me.

Personally, I'd be happy if every package that currently distributes
any form of Windows binaries, distributed a Windows installer. That's
about the same level of coverage as existed before setuptools
appeared, so I don't think that's impossible to achieve. I agree that
expecting *everything* to have a Windows installer is unreasonable.

As regards your other points regarding Windows installers, I don't
disagree entirely. But my personal preference is to work with the
system packager, even if it's less functional than I'd like.

Paul.