[Python-Dev] Integrate BeautifulSoup into stdlib?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> * The creation of an *installer* is something quite different.  An
> installer for a py2exe based tool also doesn't need dependency
> management.

Right. I wasn't really talking about py2exe (anymore), but about
installers for libraries.

> An installer for a pure-python package that made no attempt
> to bundle dependencies might be nice, but I don't quite see how that
> falls outside the scope of distutils/setuptools/etc.  In other words, I
> don't see why the installer can't bootstrap the 'normal' dependency
> management which would be used if the package was installed any other
> way or on other platforms.

Perhaps that could be a solution. However, in package management
systems that solve this properly, you also have proper uninstallation,
which includes:
- uninstallation is rejected if packages still depend on the
  to-be-removed package (or else offers to remove the relying packages
  as well)
- uninstallation reference-counts, causing an automatically-installed
  package to be uninstalled if it is no longer needed, or else offers
  to compute-then-uninstall all packages which are no longer needed.
The .exe/.msi installers do support uninstallation, but, alas, no
dependency management.

> * distutils already has the ability to create Windows installer
> executables for pure-python apps/libs.  I agree it would be nice if it
> was an MSI but that is an implementation detail rather than
> implementation requirement.

Right - plus, distutils also supports creating MSIs.

>  How were Mike's packages fundamentally
> different than that?

Dunno.

Martin