[Distutils] newbie distutils questions *please*...

[amk at amk.ca]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 04:50:25PM -0700, seberino at spawar.navy.mil wrote:
> 3. Will bdist_rpm install JUST pyc files (bytecode)???
>    Will sdist     install JUST py (source) files???
>    What about installing source and bytecode?? (py and pyc)??
>    How do that and is THAT a good idea???

Binary distributions (bdist) means that C extensions are compiled and the
user installing them doesn't need a C compiler.  .py files are also
installed, and may or may not be compiled into .pyc files, depending on the
bdist format.

Source distributions require users to run "setup.py install" to install
them, and if the package contains C extensions and the user doesn't have a C
compiler, they'll be unable to install the package.

For packages consisting of only Python code, there's only a slight
difference between source and binary distributions from the end user's point
of view.  C extensions make the difference greater; in particular, few
Windows users will have a compiler.

--amk