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

[Lennart Regebro]

2009/4/9 Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com>:
> Personally, I'd be happy if every package that currently distributes
> any form of Windows binaries, distributed a Windows installer. That's
> about the same level of coverage as existed before setuptools
> appeared, so I don't think that's impossible to achieve. I agree that
> expecting *everything* to have a Windows installer is unreasonable.

I don't see the benefits of a windows installer in that situation. You
are going to have a large set of python libraries, with a small subset
of them in the Installed Software list, and the rest not. What did
that achieve?

> As regards your other points regarding Windows installers, I don't
> disagree entirely. But my personal preference is to work with the
> system packager, even if it's less functional than I'd like.

But the suggestion of having packages managed from the python setup
program is working with the system packager just as much as selecting
what parts of Office you want is. That's what Windows users would
expect. I don't think they, when installing Plone expect to get a
hundred Python packages listed in the Installed Software list, as an
extreme example. And how would it handle multiple installations into
Python, etc.?

I just don't see the benefit. While having a Python package manager, I
*can* see the benefit.

But as always, I don't use Windows much nowadays, so I don't really
care. I just want understand the thinking.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Python, Zope, Plone, Grok
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
+33 661 58 14 64