[Distutils] Eggs vs bdist_wininst (Was: Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip))

[Paul Moore]

2009/10/9 Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>:
> Many Windows users would be quite happy if the standard mechanism for
> installing non-source distributions on Windows was via the wininst binaries.

Actually, my understanding is that easy_install is perfectly able to
use (download, unpack and install) bdist_wininst packages. So *as a
binary distribution format* bdist_wininst installers can do all that
eggs can, plus extra (install themselves unassisted!)

So why is there a need for an egg binary format on Windows?

Paul.