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

[Chris Withers]

Paul Moore wrote:
> Maybe someone has confused me. I understood that easy_install can
> consume bdist_wininst format .exe files just as easily as .egg format,
> and easy_install will do your dependency management for you.
> 
> So, if you provide a bdist_wininst .exe format file:
> 
> 1. People who want integration with add/remove just run the .exe and are happy.

But will people not be surprised that none of the dependencies are 
installed if they do this?

> If you provide egg format files, only group (2) are satisfied. And if
> you provide both, you just make extra work for yourself.

It generally equates to typing a whole extra len('bdist_wininst') 
characters ;-)

> suspect, based on my own behaviour, that there's a proportion of
> people who won't ask for a bdist_wininst, but will just not bother
> with your package (depending on lots of other things, not least of
> which is the level of competition).

They're welcome to go elsewhere if they can't be bothered to use what's 
available or ask for what they think they need.

> wxPython, PyQT, PyGame, cx_Oracle, pywin32, PIL, lxml, numpy, pyCrypto
> 
> I can't build these myself, and if the projects only provide eggs, I
> can't use them (unless I use easy_install or something similar, and
> accept the implications of that).

..or you just place the egg on your python path...

Chris

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