[Python-Dev] Adventures with x64, VS7 and VS8 on Windows

[Tony Nelson]

At 12:20 PM +0000 5/26/07, Kristján Valur Jónsson wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alexey Borzenkov [mailto:snaury at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 20:36
>> To: Kristján Valur Jónsson
>> Cc: Martin v. Löwis; Mark Hammond; distutils-sig at python.org; python-
>> dev at python.org
>> Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Adventures with x64, VS7 and VS8 on Windows
>>
>> On 5/23/07, Kristján Valur Jónsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> wrote:
>> > > > Install in the ProgramFiles folder.
>> > > Only over my dead body. *This* is silly.
>> > Bill doesn't think so.  And he gets to decide.  I mean we do want
>> > to play nice, don't we?  Nothing installs itself in the root anymore,
>> > not since windows 3.1
>>
>> Maybe installing in the root is not good, but installing to "Program
>> Files" is just asking for trouble. All sorts of development tools
>> might suddenly break because of that space in the middle of the path
>> and requirement to use quotes around it. I thus usually install things
>> to <drive>:\Programs. I'm not sure if any packages/programs will break
>> because of that space, but what if some will?
>
>Development tools used on windows already have to cope with this.
>Spaces are not going away, so why not bite the bullet and deal
>with them?  Moving forward sometimes means crossing rivers.
 ...

Microsoft's command line cannot cope with two pathnames that must be
quoted, so if the command path itself must be quoted, then no argument to
the command can be quoted.  There are tricky hacks that can work around
this mind-boggling stupidity, but life is simpler if Python itself doesn't
use up the one quoted pathname.  I don't know if Microsoft has had the good
sense to fix this in Vista (which I probably will never use, since an
alternative exists), but they didn't in XP.
-- 
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