[Distutils] PEP 527 - Removing Un(der)used file types/extensions on PyPI

[Philippe Ombredanne]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 10:08 PM, Glyph Lefkowitz
<glyph at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
> In particular, bdist_wininst and bdist_msi (which Twisted supported for a
> long time, and still builds, so it's not like I don't understand their
> benefits and history!) are incompatible with virtualenvs, and make
> development under Windows harder, especially as compared to binary eggs.
> The presence of these builds confuses users and creates more problems than
> it solves in every interaction I've had with onboarding people onto Python
> projects in the last couple of years.

I can only agree. A strong +1 to deprecate bdist_wininst and bdist_msi ....
from Pypi ... and from Python everywhere if it is be possible.

I build and distribute a somewhat engaged open source app (scancode-toolkit)
and earlier version used eggs and now this is all wheels in virtualenvs.
This runs on linux/mac/win with vendored wheels.
I cannot fathom _any_ benefit from using  Windows installers in a modern
Python  environment like this and other where pip and virtualenv rule.

Like Glyph, I think these these installers only create confusion at
first and are the
source of troubles down the road even if they may seem like a friendly solution
for win noobs on the surface. Every time I met someone using them, this was a
source of mess in their Python setup.
They made sense in 1999, but are likely best forgotten today.
And if this was dropped elsewhere beside Pypi, there could quite a rafter of
arcane code to drop from distutils and setuptools.... a good thing IMHO.
-- 
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne