[AstroPy] Deployment and packaging

[Matt Davis]

> I'll confess I'm not sure why the standard Python distributions available at www.python.org
> aren't considered valid "easy Python installations" -- at least for Mac and Windows machines. I know 
> that the standard binary distributions of numpy, scipy, and matplotlib for Macs are designed to install
> into the www.python.org Python distributions (and I assume the same is true for the Windows
> binary versions of those packages). The www.python.org installations *are* the standard, up-to-date
> versions, after all, and they have no peculiar license restrictions.
> 
> Is Linux, then, the main problem as far as "easy Python [+numpy/scipy/matplotlib] installations" go?

I don't know why more people don't use the python.org installers, but as easy as it may seem to us, having to find and download 4 different Mac binaries to get Python/Numpy/Scipy/Matplotlib actually does discourage some people. Then they have to install ipython, easy_install/pip, file readers... Some good directions might help. That seems to be the BioPython method and as long as we're making an AstroPy website we might as well provide those good directions too.

As Tom notes there are users with restricted permissions who could be helped by a nice installer, and sys admins might appreciate it too.

- Matt