installer user interface glitch ?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 3:24 AM, rurpy--- via Python-list
<python-list at python.org> wrote:
> I dont recall seeing anyone posting asking why they could not get
> Python to install on Windows 95 recently.  I only read this group
> intermittently but I have seen *many* posts asking why they couldnt
> install on XP.
>
> You acknowledge yourself: "there are a lot more XP boxes out there."

Yes, there are. This is not a customer base; they are not paying me,
nor (as far as I know) the PSF, to support them.

>> There *is* a plan to have the installer give a better error message
>> for this situation.
>
> A better message from the installer is necessary but not sufficient.
> Don't make people go through the effort to download the whole thing,
> do their planning and preparations for using or upgrading Python
> only to discover at the last moment it wont work.

The largest installer [1] is 30MB, which might have been considered
large a decade ago, but on today's connections, that's probably going
to download in less time than it takes people to search for "python",
find python.org, and decide to click the download link. The web
installer is less than one megabyte. If you can't afford to download a
single meg of executable to find out whether something works on your
system, you probably can't afford to download the page with the info
telling you not to bother downloading the binary.

> That is really shitty customer relations.

See above, and define 'customer'.

> The reality is that people trying install Python-3.5 on XP *is* a
> problem.  Telling them they should have read some obscure release
> notes is not a solution.

Nor is telling them they should have read the web site that they
downloaded it from. Remember, people can click a direct download link
*on the python.org front page* and be immediately downloading Python 2
or 3 for the OS that the browser announces. Where would you put the
big fat noisy warning?

>> But I don't think the web site necessarily has to
>> have noise about old versions of OSes. Where would you draw the line?
>
> I think my responses above answer that.

Not really, no. There are currently a large number of XP boxes out
there, for some definition of 'large'. Presumably that number is
dropping. At what point will it be appropriate to ditch the warning?
And what about older versions of non-Windows OSes - if there are a
large number of people still running an old Mac OS, should we include
something on the front page that warns everyone about a lack of
support? How large is large? I say again: Where would you draw the
line?

ChrisA

[1] Based on the file sizes here:
https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-350/