Python Light Revisted?

[Steve M]

I agree with you in part and disagree in part.

I don't see the point to making the distribution any smaller. 10MB for
the installer from python.org, 16MB for ActiveState .exe installer. How
is 5MB "lightweight" while 10MB isn't? The Windows XP version of Java
at java.com is 16+ MB, and the .NET framework is, well, I don't know
how big, but I doubt it's much less than 10MB.

Also I think it's a terrible idea to distribute without pieces of the
standard library if the distribution is meant to be developed against
for arbitrary applications. (If you just want a slimmed down Python for
one specific application, use py2exe - I think it only includes
whatever gets imported for your program to run.) And excluding zip
while including Twisted? I don't get it. Besides, how do you know
Twisted doesn't import XML-RPC? I could see an enlarged Python that
includes Twisted along with the standard library, and in fact
ActiveState's includes win32 stuff. There's another such
mega-distribution around, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
But removing zip from the standard library so you can save 20kb seems
foolish. (Again, unless it is for one specific application, in which
case py2exe should do the trick, although I could be wrong about that
since I've never used it.)

Now, what I do agree with is a Python that can be run from a folder
without having to be installed on the system. That could have lots of
benefits, if the details with pythonpath and whatever could be sorted
out. For example I haven't upgraded to 2.4 yet because I have 20
different packages (e.g. SOAPpy, ZODB, whatever)  installed on WinXP,
many of which required me selecting my 2.3 installation when I
installed them. I have no idea what will happen to all those if I run
the ActiveState installer for 2.4. I seem even to remember reading that
I have to un-install 2.3 before installing 2.4. I don't want to
re-install those 20 packages. Anyway I haven't had time to research it
and it isn't pressing, even though I'd like to start trying decorators
and generator expressions.