[Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] MSI being downloaded 10x more than all other files?!

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Guido van Rossum schrieb:
> I looked through the python.org web stats (as I usually do when
> preparing for a keynote) and discovered that
> /ftp/python/2.5/python-2.5.msi is by far the top download -- 271,971
> hits, more than 5x the next one, /ftp/python/2.5/Python-2.5.tgz
> (47,898 hits). Are these numbers real? 

They should be. Thomas and I fixed the counting during the Google
sprint. The log files are now processed once a day; before, they
were rotated only once a week, and the web server stopped logging
when the partition storing the log files were full (which frequently
happened). So if you look at the statistics before August, you see
that some days don't have any accesses counted - the stats can't
be trusted in the period between the move away from creosote and
the Google sprint.

> (The byte counts suggest they
> are.) What could cause this dramatic popularity of Python on Windows?
> Does some vendor have an auto-install hook that installs Python
> whenever someone opens up their new computer? Or have we just hit the
> jackpot?

I think this is Python's popularity. One factor is ready availability:
"normal" users don't build Python from source. So Windows users download
it from python.org, everybody else gets the binaries from the OS vendor.
They come with the Linux distribution, they come with OS X, and they
come with Solaris. Many of these people don't build Python themselves
(and they can't, because they'll also have to rebuild mod_python,
 the Python subversion modules, etc).

So the 50,000 source downloads are just from people who want to
see the cutting egde, when their "regular" sources only provide
2.4 binaries (say).

Also, Python 2.5 is relatively new. After some time, people will
have local copies of the 2.5 MSI file, and don't redownload if they
install on a new machine.

Regards,
Martin