[Pythonmac-SIG] installer bugs

[Russell E Owen]

>>**** Bug ***** I then ran the package manager, to try to install 
>>Tkinter. The IDE launched, but then I got an error message:
>>
>>Cannot open http://www.python.org/packman/
>>version-0.3/darwin-6.3-Power_Macintosh.plist: HTTP
>>Error 404: Not Found
>
>This happened because you're running 10.2.3 or so, but you probably 
>guessed as much already. But there's real bugs here too:

Actually, I had no clue at all what was going on. Now that you 
mention it, darwin-6.3 might be a clue for those who have any idea 
what verson of darwin they have, but until this moment it never even 
occurred to me that darwin would have a different version number than 
MacOS X itself. So as I say, I really had no idea what to make of the 
error, nor of the strange URLs for the plists.

Sigh. I'll upgrade to 10.2.6 in a week or so. I've been waiting until 
my DiskWarrior upgrade shows up, and they are dreadfully backlogged 
(I ordered it over 5 weeks ago, at which time it was 3-4 weeks 
back-ordered).

>>Other package manager comments:
>>- Much of the descriptive text (third column) is truncated, and 
>>making the window wider doesn't help because all three columns 
>>grow. Suggested fixes:
>
>This is a problem inherent with the widget I use. I don't think it's 
>easy to fix, and as the widget is doomed anyway and I hope to have a 
>PyObjC-based Package Manager fairly soon I don't want to put too 
>much work in it.

That is excellent news. I confess to some regrets that using a 
non-cross-platform GUI means the package manager will not be easily 
ported to other platforms, thus cutting down on prospective 
programmers to help out with it. But PyObjC does seem a very natural 
choice since it is native and presumably fairly lightweight.

>>- Consider hiding source distributions by default. Naive users will 
>>only need the binary and I think it's confusing to have both 
>>visible.
>
>But then they wouldn't know about packages that are only available 
>as source... OTOH: the scapegoat should create binary packages 
>anyway of everything interesting... What do other people feel about 
>this?

Oops, I was unclear in my writing. I meant that IF there are both 
binary and source versions then it would probably be less confusing 
to show only the recommended version by default. Otherwise naive 
users will wonder what to do (take one? take the other? take both?).

Either that or make sure the descriptive strings have enough info to 
help naive users. (But the strings are already truncated for now, so 
if you do go that route then it'd be helpful to discuss it in the 
package manager help or in a README or something).

>Thanks for the great feedback!

Thank you so much for all your hard work on this. Despite a few 
problems as we've been discussing, 2.3b2 is great and the package 
manager looks very promising. My fairly complex Tkinter application 
seems to run perfectly under 2.3b2 (as installed by your 
soon-to-be-replaced 2.3b2-1 binary installer).

-- Russell