[Distutils] setuptools develop command garbles binary files specified as scripts setup() parameter on windows

[Paul Moore]

On 17 July 2014 17:04, David Genest <david.genest at ubisoft.com> wrote:
> I would like to know what is the take in the community on this.

My view would be:

1. The scripts argument is for *scripts* not binary files, so it is
perfectly correct to open them in text mode, do line ending
translation, etc.
2. What you're doing is not supported behaviour (although I appreciate
the fact that it's useful to you).
3. The scripts feature is generally discouraged in favour of entry points.
4. By including binaries, you make your package non-portable, and do
so in a way that setuptools/wheel/pip cannot spot, so (for example) if
you were to build a wheel it would not be recognised as
architecture-specific.

You can probably include a project-specific hack if you're so
inclined, but this shouldn't be added as a feature of setuptools.

Longer term, maybe your use case is something that we could support
via Metadata 2.0. I'm honestly not sure at the moment, as your
description isn't very specific. What "external binary files" do you
package? If they are DLLs (as you mention) how would they work on
Unix? I'm a bit confused here, as you mention the script handling
being OK for you on Unix, and yet you're talking about DLLs, which are
for Windows... If this is intended to be a single-platform solution,
how do you anticipate communicating that fact to the build and install
tools (wheel, pip, etc)?

Thanks for raising the issue, it sounds like you have a use case that
isn't well supported at the moment. But I agree with Jason that this
shouldn't be forced into the scripts functionality, which is, after
all, intended for *scripts*.

Paul