[Python-Dev] Place for setuptools manuals and source for .exe files? (original) (raw)

Phillip J. Eby pje at telecommunity.com
Tue Apr 18 18:34:31 CEST 2006

Now that setuptools is in the trunk, I need to also add its manuals and the source for its .exe files. These currently live only in the sandbox.

First, the C source, used to create the 'gui.exe' and 'cli.exe' launchers that setuptools uses to create script wrappers on Windows. The source currently lives at sandbox/trunk/setuptools/launcher.c - should I create a PC/setuptools directory (analagous to PC/bdist_wininst) to put it in? Do I need to make it buildable with the MS toolchain? I currently build it with MinGW, as the code doesn't link with Python at all; it's strictly a standalone .exe, like w9xpopen. And its usage is similar to bdist_wininst's .exe header, in that it's used by setuptools as data during runtime, and the .exe is directly kept in revision control. So it doesn't need to be a part of the normal build process, but would only be rebuilt if there are any changes to the source.

Second, the manuals. Setuptools currently has three:

pkg_resources.txt -- the reference manual for the pkg_resources module

setuptools.txt -- a developer's guide to using setuptools to package

projects for distribution

EasyInstall.txt -- a user's manual for the easy_install package

installation tool.

It's pretty clear that pkg_resources.txt should be converted to a standard library reference chapter, since that's essentially what it is. The other two manuals, however, are roughly the setuptools versions of "distributing Python modules" and "installing Python modules", respectively. Should they be listed as separate manuals?

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