[Distutils] Distutils changes - end user requirements

[Paul Moore]

2009/4/9 David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp>:
> Ben Finney wrote:
>>
>> I presume, by “meta-requirement”, you're showing awareness that this
>> is something very much dependent on motivating people to actually
>> create those installers for each and every package.
>>
>
> Yes, and eggs decreases this motivation, as eggs are cross-platform (if
> only python code of course), so people do not build .exe anymore. With a
> wininst/msi-based installation, you get more features, which fit more
> with what many windows users expect (software shown in install/remove
> panel, can be removed). So those windows users have a worse install
> experience than before eggs were widespread.
>
>>
>> Does “any machine” include those without MSI-creation tools? I imagine
>> (but would love to know otherwise) that the creation of an MSI package
>> cannot be done on any arbitrary Windows machine, but needs special
>> (external to distutils) programs and/or libraries installed first.
>>
>
> No, it doesn't need anything special, as it is included in python
> (msilib is available at least in python >= 2.5 stdlib). Actually, you
> can build almost any extension from wine as long as  mingw compilers are
> an option, msi or wininst-based. Msi in particular have features that
> eggs will most likely never be able to support well (group policy
> support, which is something that some numpy/scipy users have regularly
> requested).

Yes, I am very much aware (hence, as you noted, my use of the term
"meta-requirement") that this is more a social issue than a technical
one - although I believe that technical decisions can influence the
social side.

Thanks to David for answering the rest of your queries much better
than I would have managed!

Paul.