[Python-Dev] installing IDLE & other Tools

[Moshe Zadka]

[Jeremy Hylton]
> We've discussed installation of other tools once or twice, but I've
> never decided what exactly to do.  The compiler package, for example,
> comes with a distutils setup.py script that will do the job.  I think
> the best way to move forward is to write setup.py scripts for all the
> other tools that ought to be installed.

That does seem reasonable. It seems the most non-intrusive, since we
get out of the way of proffessional packages, while still giving them
something to start from.

> I don't know how to package up idle cleanly, though.  I need to decide
> what to install and where to install it.  The Tools/idle directory is
> nominally a package, but it doesn't seem like that will help much for
> installing it.  If we want to call the executable script idle.py, it
> will clash with the idle package name.  Any advice here?  It doesn't
> seem like there is any obvious way to "install" IDLE; it looks like it
> is intended to be run out of the source directory.

I don't think we want to call the executable script idle.py. Each platform
will have it's own problems with it: for UNIXish stuff, call it "idle".
For windowish stuff, it's better to call it "idle.pyw" anway. Both of those
should *not* be in the same directory as the idle package. In the UNIX
case it should be in $prefix/bin, and in the windows case, it should be
where python.exe is.
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Moshe Zadka <sig@zadka.site.co.il>
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