[Distutils] Distutils changes - end user requirements (Was: Deprecate MANIFEST.in)

[Lennart Regebro]

2009/4/9 Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com>:
> Don't they? I have to admit that I'm baffled by how the features in
> setuptools/eggs/easy_install all hang together. What about the magic
> that creates executables from scripts? Entry points? Stuff like that.
> Don't you need to use eggs to make them work?

No....? Entry points work even if you have the source code in a tgz
format and run setup.py install. The distribution format is not
magical for that afaik.

> So by what you're saying, eggs are a strict subset of
> bdist_wininst, and so people should be distributing bdist_wininst
> installers. But they aren't, so what gives?

Nobody knows about it?

But in any case, even if it would be a good idea to have every single
Python package on the system listed in the Add/Remove programs list
(Which I don't think it is, but that's a matter of taste, no logical
arguments behind that), that would in practice mean that each and
every package on PyPI must have a wininstaller, even if it is a
pure-python package. That doesn't seem realistic to me.


When I used Windows I would have preferred to have installed packages
listed as "parts" in the Python installer, so that you can go in an
modify the setup and add and remove parts. As with WinG or MS Office
or whatever. That would also remove the need for a separate installer
exe for each file. This is then basically the same requirements as the
uninstall requirements from Linux people, except that you would have a
GUI.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
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