[Distutils] Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip)

[David Lyon]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:51:07 -0500, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com>
wrote:

> easy_install does not execute the executable. bdist_wininst installers
are
> zip 
> files concatenated with an executable header. easy_install just unzips
the
> file 
> as if it were a zipped egg and ignores the executable part.

Ok - well thanks for the information and I learned something.

A typical windows user, if they see an .exe installer, they would just
install it by double-clicking on it. I don't know how many winodw users
would automatically think to open a command shell and type the command
line.

In all seriousness, a bdist_wininst installer would be ok for installing
a python application, but the support for applications in distutils for
windows is incomplete. 

.egg files are perfect for windows. But the neccessary python support
to make them work properly isn't complete either.

What I am referring to here, is the shell extensions to the registry
to make them load automatically.

There isn't any inherent requirement in windows saying that setuptools
need to be loaded for eggs to work. 

It would be so nice if we could double click on an egg file on pypi,
download it, and install it automatically.

I can't think of anything simpler. That would be proper native windows
support.

We would only have to add one script to distutils and a few registry
settings for this could be accomplished. It could be progressively
rolled out with new python versions.

>From my perspective, PJE did a heck of a lot of good work. EGG files
are a good idea. As long as they get unpacked and installed as any
other python package on arrival.

David