[Python-Dev] Packaging and binary distributions for Python 3.3 (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Thu Oct 13 19:30:32 CEST 2011

wininst and msi bdists can continue to be used as previously, for people who want clicky installation to their system Python. With built-in package management and virtual environments in 3.3+, we can just recommend that people publish bdistsimple instead of wininst or eggs.

Pardon me for jumping in - but I fail to see why those missing features can't be provided by bdist_wininst and bdist_msi in a straight-forward manner. Giving people even more choice is bad, IMO, as it will confuse users. There should be one obvious way.

In particular wrt. virtual environments: I see no need to actually install files multiple times. It's rather sufficient that the distributions to be installed are available in the virtual env after installation, and unavailable after being removed. Actually copying them into the virtual environment might not be necessary or useful.

So I envision a setup where the MSI file puts the binaries into a place on disk where pysetup (or whatever tool) finds them, and links them whereever they need to go (using whatever linking mechanism might work). For MSI in particular, there could be some interaction with pysetup, e.g. to register all virtualenvs that have linked the installation, and warn the user that the file is still in use in certain locations. Likewise, automated download might pick an MSI file, and tell it not to place itself into the actual Python installation, but instead into a location where pysetup will find it.

Regards, Martin

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