[Python-Dev] Packaging and binary distributions for Python 3.3

[Paul Moore]

On 17 October 2011 10:15, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> It may not work for you, because in the default branch, packaging is currently
> missing some functionality or has bugs (I've raised about a dozen issues since
> trying to get packaging working with virtual environments).

Ah. That might be part of the issue I've been having. I do recall
hitting some bugs. The other part is that I wasn't trying anything
nearly as sophisticated as this :-)

> In the pythonv branch (which is pretty up to date with default), I've added the
> missing functionality/fixed some of the issues. Here's an example:
[...]

Nice! I see what you are getting at now.

>> I'd like to see a bdist_xxx command to do the build step
>> as you describe, if only to make it trivially simple for developers to
>> produce binary distributions. Having to package stuff up manually is
>> bound to put at least some developers off. If you can give me the
>> example I mentioned above, I could work on modifying the bdist_simple
>> code I posted to the tracker today to produce that format rather than
>> my custom format based on bdist_wininst.
>
> Example as above, though you may need to use the pythonv branch to actually get
> it working. I can zip up the directory and send it to you, but at the moment
> there's missing functionality in pythonv in terms of the link step when
> building the extension. (I overcame this by linking manually .) If you want, I
> can zip all the project files up and send them to you.

No need, you've given me enough to investigate myself. But thanks for the offer.

> In the more general case, one might want an arrangement with a directory
> structure like compiled/x86/..., compiled/x64/... in the built zip, with the
> hooks.py code setting up the resources appropriately based on the target
> environment as determined at installation time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we standardised on a particular
structure, the hooks.py contents could actually be integrated into the
core, if we wanted? People could still write hooks for more complex
cases, but the basic binary build case could work out of the box that
way.

>> Agreed. Personally, as I've said, I'm happy not to use Add/Remove even
>> for system installations - pysetup list and pysetup remove do what I
>> need without slowing down the Add/Remove list. But I accept that's not
>> likely to be the view of many Windows users. Anyone using virtual
>> envs, though, is probably by definition comfortable enough with
>> command line tools to be willing to use pysetup3.
>
> A fair subset of those who must have ARP integration will probably also want to
> install using MSI, so that would be taken care of by having a good bdist_simple
> -> bdist_msi conversion.

Yes, that would be good.
Paul.