[Distutils] Odd limitation in packaging/distutils2

[Mark Hammond]

On 4/11/2011 3:53 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 3 November 2011 16:45, Éric Araujo<merwok at netwok.org>  wrote:
>> I wouldn’t do that: It would trick Python into thinking it’s installed
>> without actually doing all the things that make it installed.
>
> Agreed, it's not good. It's just that I don't know (on Windows) what
> things *do* make a Python build "installed". I'll see if I can find a
> definitive statement from somewhere...

There really isn't anything that makes it "installed".  A built Python 
works completely fine just where it is (and indeed, will work just fine 
if moved somewhere else).  The closest thing to being "installed" on 
windows is an "InstalledPath" (or something :) registry key for the 
version, but that is only necessary in a limited number of contexts - 
when some executable other than the in-place python[w].exe needs to know 
where things are.

I think the original report is certainly a bug on Windows (and seems 
mis-guided on other platforms, but each to their own :)

Mark