[Distutils] Draft of new setuptools installation instructions

[Chris Lambacher]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 09:23:28AM +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> > At 11:12 PM 10/3/2006 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> > >Also, the automatic pause would annoy me. How would you make it *not*
> > >happen if I ran the command from a console window I already had open?
> >
> > The idea would be to register a separate "easy_install-win.exe" under
> > "easy_install" in App Paths.  This version would pause after termination,
> > while the normal version would not.  Since console programs invoked via the
> > App Paths mechanism *always* get their own new window, this should work out
> > nicely.
> 
> Sadly, not true. The replacement console program 4NT (which I use
> pretty much exclusively) uses App Paths to locate executables. So if
> you (in effect) alias easy_install to easy_install-win, you'll break
> it for 4NT users. And in a way that will confuse the heck out of them,
> because it's very subtle (mapping an executable name to a different
> executable via App Paths is not normal usage).
> 
> Why not just have the second executable with a simple to type name
> (easy_installw, say) and suggest people type *that* in the Run window?
> Keep it simple!
The main problem to be solved here is how do you put up a "Press enter to
close window" prompt when a new console is opened up and not do that when
running in an existing console?

We could try to detect that condition.  I looks like someone on the Cygwin
XFree project mailing list solved that problem in 2003.  I don't see this as
having actually made it into their source base yet though.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.xfree/5967
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin.xfree/5965

The second message has an UU encoded sample C implementation that could be
modified for our purposes.

-Chris