[Python-Dev] Windows installers and %PATH%

[Nick Coghlan]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Andrew Pennebaker
<andrew.pennebaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please have the Windows installers add the Python installation directory to
> the PATH environment variable.

Please read PEP 397: Python Launcher for Windows.

Or at least do us the courtesy of acknowledging that if the issue was
as simple as "just munge the PATH", it would have been done long ago.
Windows is a developer hostile platform unless you completely buy into
the Microsoft toolchain, which is not an option for cross-platform
projects like Python.

It's well within Microsoft's capabilities to create and support a
POSIX compatibility layer that allows applications to look and feel
like native ones, but they choose not to, since they see
cross-platform development as a competitive threat to their desktop
dominance. There's a reason many open source projects don't offer
native support at all, instead instructing people to use Cygwin as a
compatibility layer.

It irks me greatly when people place the blame for this situation on
volunteer programmers giving them stuff for free instead of where it
belongs (i.e. on the multibillion dollar corporation deliberately
failing to implement a widely recognised OS interoperability
standard).

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia