[Python-Dev] Packaging and binary distributions for Python 3.3

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Thanks for the clarification. I can see why this would be important.
> But maintaining 3 different interfaces to do essentially the same
> thing (collect some data from the user, then based on that data put
> the same set of files in the same places) seems a waste of effort, and
> a recipe for discrepancies in capabilities.
>
> Maybe the wininst and MSI installers should ultimately become simple
> UIs around a zipfile and an invocation of the packaging APIs? Not that
> I'm offering to do that work, I'm afraid...

I think you are mixing issues: even if they were simple wrappers, they
would still be 3 different interfaces (presented to the user). I.e.
the user doesn't really care whether there is a zip file inside
(as in bdist_wininst) or a cab file (as in bdist_msi), and whether or
not the packaging APIs are invoked during installation.

So if you want to get rid of interfaces, you really have to drop
one of the formats.

Making maintenance of the interfaces simpler and more homogenous
by having them call into installed Python code is certainly worthwhile.
The challenge here is that the installers also work on older Python
versions (unless there are extension modules in there), so they
could only use the packaging API when installing into 3.3 or newer.

Regards,
Martin