[Python-ideas] Python package file type

[Yuval Greenfield]

Most of pypi is source distributions (zip/tgz), some of it is eggs, some are
msi/exe windows installers. When I started with python I found it a bit
confusing, which distribution do I need? "setup.py install" isn't obvious.
Do you need an installer for each and every OS?

Would it be nice if all of python packages behaved a bit more like firefox
extensions (just as an example). Let's say all the packages are still
zip/tgz files but with the extension "pypack". Whenever python 4 (a future
version :) is installed it registers to handle the package filetype with the
operating system.

So on pypi each package can have one big and pretty "Install" button. After
clicking - you get a nice and native installation wizard which asks:


   1. Express Install (here it'll automatically install the package to all
   installed & compatible python versions)
   2. Custom (here you can extract the package somewhere or other advanced
   package stuff)


All packages would have the same installer framework that would simply be a
GUI for setup.py.

What do you guys think, could this be useful?

--Yuval
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