[Python-Dev] Distutils and Distribute roadmap (and some words on Virtualenv, Pip) (original) (raw)

David Cournapeau cournape at gmail.com
Wed Oct 21 04:44:25 CEST 2009

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

2009/10/20 Chris Withers <chris at simplistix.co.uk>:

I wouldn't have a problem if integrating with the windows package manager was an optional extra, but I think it's one of many types of package management that need to be worried about, so might be easier to get the others working and let anyone who wants anything beyond a pure-python packaging system that works across platforms, regardless of whether binary extensions are needed, do the work themselves... There are many (I believe) Windows users for whom bdistwininst is just what they want. For those people, where's the incentive to switch in what you propose? You're not providing the features they currently have, and frankly "do the work yourself" is no answer (not everyone can, often for entirely legitimate reasons).

I am not so familiar with msi or wininst internals, but isn't it possible to install w.r.t. a given prefix ? Basically, making it possible to use a wininst in a virtualenv if required (in which case I guess it would not register with the windows db - at least it should be possible to disable it).

The main problem with bdist_wininst installers is that they don't work with setuptools dependency stuff (at least, that's the reason given by windows users for a numpy egg on windows, whereas we used to only provide an exe). But you could argue it is a setuptools pb as much as a wininst pb, I guess.

David

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