python-dev Summary for 2003-12-01 through 2003-12-31

[Brett C.]

Irmen de Jong <irmen at -NOSPAM-REMOVETHIS-xs4all.nl> wrote in message news:<4001a488$0$317$e4fe514c at news.xs4all.nl>...
> First: thanks Brett, for the summary. And get well soon from your pneumonia.
> 

Thanks.  The doctor has cleared me of pneumonia.  Now if the funky
feeling in my lower back when I bend over would just go away I would
be willing to claim I am perfectly healthy.

> Brett wrote:
> 
> > ------------------------
> > Compiling 2.4 under .NET
> > ------------------------
> > Martin v. Löwis has started sandbox work on an MSI installer and moving 
> > Python 2.4 over to VC 7.
> 
> MSI? Why, what is wrong with the old installer?
> I'm not too fond of MSI installers, I find them slow and large.
> Especially when using lots of files. That may be a problem in the
> installer script, but almost all MSI installers I encountered were
> extremely slow when installing and deinstalling a program that
> consists of a lot of files (and Python does).
> (I must note that this is much less so with recent versions
> than before, because the help files are no longer in seperate
> html files but in a single chm file).
> 

I am guessing here, but I think it has to do with maintennance and
modernization.  The WISE installer was only maintained by Tim Peters
and he has been hella (too much time in Berkeley) busy for a while
now.  Moving over to MSI allows Martin to handle it along with anyone
else who has experience with MSI installers (which seems to be more
than WISE from the emails on the list).  Decentralizing reliance on
individuals is important in case someone falls off the face of the
earth.  The Python 2.3 releases have mostly been handled by people who
did not usually handle it.  Yes, there were some issues, but now there
a bunch more people who know how to deal with a release.

Beyond that I don't know since I am an OS X user now and just compile
from source.  =)

-Brett