[Distutils] sdist default archive format

[David Lyon]

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:34:43 +0200, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I've changed the sdist command some time ago, so it uses the sdtilb
> tarfile module, instead of the "tar" command,
> meaning that we could switch to the tar format under windows by
> default as well now, not requiring the "tar" program anymore
> 
> But some people may prefer the zip format.

Sounds like useful work Tarek,

tarfiles aren't a problem at all on windows if you have the
software to read them....

I'm personally a fan of the "black-box" approach...

Where it just works.... 

I say this just that my personal experience with python so
far is that .tar.gz packages rarely seem to install properly
under windows. Or if they do... easyinstall reports an error
on them....

(try - easyinstall buildbot... or pydbf to see what i mean)

I guess that is a side issue...

My point is whatever you do to try to help developers build
for multiple platforms from their own platform is worthwhile.

When I get a chance I'll actually try to start using
distutils to bundle my own application. Which is as you
might know a package manager for python that is supposed
to be delivered to all platforms on which python runs.

After that, I'm having thoughts of doing a gui interface
for distutils... to make the whole thing easier from a
developers point of view...

but I can only make observations on distutils from a
bit of a distance... but it looks better the more I
learn about it...

David