[Python-Dev] Windows installers and %PATH%

[Brian Curtin]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 23:04, Andrew Pennebaker <
andrew.pennebaker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Please have the Windows installers add the Python installation directory to
> the PATH environment variable.


The http://bugs.python.org bug tracker is a better place for feature
requests like this, of which there have been several over the years. This
has become a hotter topic lately with several discussions around the
community, and a PEP to provide some similar functionality. I've talked with
several educators/trainers around and the lack of a Path installation is the
#1 thing that bites their newcomers, and it's an issue that bites them
before they've even begun to learn.

Many newbies dive in without knowing that they must manually add C:\PythonXY
> to PATH. It's yak shaving, something perfectly automatable that should have
> been done by the installers way back in Python 1.0.
>
> Please also add PYTHONROOT\Scripts. It's where cool things like
> easy_install.exe are stored. More yak shaving.
>

A clean installation of Python includes no Scripts directory, so I'm not
sure we should be polluting the Path with yet-to-exist directories. An
approach could be to have packaging optionally add the scripts directory on
the installation of a third-party package.

The only potential downside to this is upsetting users who manage multiple
> python installations. It's not a problem: they already manually adjust PATH
> to their liking.
>

"Users who manage multiple python installations" is probably a very, very
large number, so we have quite the audience to appease, and it actually is a
problem. We should not go halfway on this feature and say "if it doesn't
work perfectly, you're back to being on your own". I think the likely case
is that any path addition feature will read the path, then offer to replace
existing instances or append to the end.

I haven't yet done any work on this, but my todo list for 3.3 includes
adding some path related features to the installer.
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