[Pythonmac-SIG] Why Do I Explicitly Need MacPython

[Konrad Hinsen]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 21:24, Bob Ippolito wrote:

> Using easy_install is quite easy -- you type "easy_install
> WhatYouNeed" and press return. That's it. Users currently need some
> familiarity with Terminal in order to get anything done with Python
> anyway.

Not necessarily. I know one person who uses nothing but IDLE and is  
quite scared of the command line.

On Oct 2, 2006, at 23:12, Bob Ippolito wrote:

> Well it's possible to create an association with .egg files to open up
> a terminal and run easy_install, but that's kinda pointless because
> nobody downloads eggs manually.

I know lots of users who would prefer to download packages and then  
install them, rather than do everything on one step. There are  
various reasons for this:

- You can decide to download only from trustworthy places, or install  
only packages handed to you by a trustworthy person.

- You can archive the packages you download, so you always know  
exactly what you installed and you can always reproduce an  
installation at a later time.

- You can install on a machine without an internet connection  
(laptops on the road, high-security sites, cluster nodes, ...)

- If you are behind a strict firewall, you can download using your  
preconfigured browser and don't have to configure proxies for  
additional tools.


Therefore, if it is possible to download and install eggs manually,  
then I am sure there would be a client base for a GUI-based installer  
associated with .egg files.


That said, I have to add that I am not a big fan of setuptools. Last  
time I checked, they didn't handle installation of C header files in  
a useful way. Since most of my packages include C header files and  
depend on other packages' C header files, setuptools are of little  
use for me.

Konrad.