[Python-Dev] setuptools in 2.5.

[Paul Moore]

On 4/21/06, Ian Bicking <ianb at colorstudy.com> wrote:
> Paul Moore wrote:
> > 2. Distributors will supply .egg files rather than bdist_wininst
> > installers (this is already happening).
>
> Really people should at least be uploading source packages in addition
> to eggs; it's certainly not hard to do so.

Windows user perspective: So what? If there's a C extension involved,
I can't build it on at least one machine I use (so I build elsewhere
and move the installer over). If external libraries are involved, I
quite likely don't have .lib files, headers, etc available.

I know this isn't such an issue on Unix. But the rise of bdist_wininst
installers on Windows was a HUGE benefit. I remember the nightmares I
used to have finding binaries for things I couldn't build myself (and
I'm atypical - I have lots of tools that most people don't).

Nowadays, there are more and more packages I can't find bdist_wininst
installers for, again. (Turbogears and PyProtocols are the two I
recall offhand). I can find eggs, but to use them I lose the package
management I *like*. Please don't tell me that Windows' Add/Remove
Programs is limited or incomplete - it does exactly what I want, and I
have no need to change. And I don't want a mix - I want *everything*
under my Python install directory to be managed by an Add/Remove
Programs entry.

I'm quite happy to convert eggs to bdist_wininst installers (or MSI
installers) by hand. That's a mechanical task, in theory, and as I'm
catering for my preferences, I see no reason to expect someone else to
do that for me. But I can't build from scratch, so don't force me to.

> Perhaps a distributor quick intro needs to be written for the standard
> library.  Something short; both distutils and setuptools documentation
> are pretty long, and for someone who just has some simple Python code to
> get out it's overwhelming.

Agreed. Maybe I'll knock up a simple set of setup.py templates (for a
pure-python module, a simple package, and a C extension, maybe) and
put them on the Wiki. I'll add it to my TODO list.

Paul.