[Distutils] Expectations on how pip needs to change for Python 3.4

[Chris Barker - NOAA Federal]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> of Steve Dower, I guess :-)) Powershell is a *great* step up from cmd,

could we use a powershell script to launch python scripts? Maybe it
wouldn't be any easier to update than an exe, but it might be more
accessible.

>> Of course, what MS is telling us is: don't rely on the command line!
>> So a really nice thing to do for Windows users would be to provide a
>> little GUI pip tool that's part of the standard install. (not that I'm
>> volunteering to write it...has no none yet written a tkInter-bsed pip
>> front-end?)

> I don't think a GUI-based tool is the answer here - the command line is
> orders of magnitude more powerful. For simple cases yes, but we have
> bdist_wininst and bdist_msi for those, and they are clearly not enough.

but they are really widely used -- maybe when binary wheels become
ubiqitous, I'll stop using them, but I'm no command line phobic, and I
usually go first to look for an installer on Windows. Over in the Mac
world, we have similar issues (except a proper command line under
there if you want it...), and eggs were a real issue because there was
nothing to launch if you point and clicked on one.

That being said, you're only going to get so far programmin python if
you can't run a simple command on the command line. So maybe any GUI
front-end should be part of a larger tool --  perhaps provided by IDE
developers, for instance.


> Most
> of my problems with the setuptools wrappers are not actually with the exe,
> but rather with the actual script (and its dependency on pkg_resources) that
> lies behind it - and that's not a Windows problem per se.

I've never liked pkg_resources..... ;-)

> The real problem is not technical, actually - it's knowing what Windows
> users will actually be comfortable with. Unix users tend to assume Windows
> users are very uncomfortable on the command line (no offence meant to anyone
> by that) whereas the reality is that some are, some (like me...) really are
> not, and some are simply unfamiliar with the capabilities of the Windows
> command line through lack of need to use it (many of my colleagues, for
> example).

true -- and a simple command line solution is fine for most -- as I
said, they'll need to deal with that one way or another if they are
going to program..(and I say this as an instructor of intro to pyton
classes...)

> I'm actually tempted to give up trying to please everyone, and just put
> together a solution that suits *me* and see how that flies. Second guessing
> what other people want makes my head hurt :-)

fine plan!

-Chris

-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
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Chris.Barker at noaa.gov