[Python-Dev] runtime dlls on Windows (original) (raw)

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Wed May 25 16:40:19 EDT 2016

On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 6:26 AM, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:

the point here is that end users should be able to:

pip install something and if there is a binary wheel for something, it should work without them having to install something else. (why MS doesn't ship ALL their runtimes with eh OS is beyond me...)

Agreed with that, but meh.

As it stands now, there are two options:

1) users need to install something else themselves: the runtime, that particular dll, the compiler... 2) every package maintainer that uses C++ needs to ship that dll with the binary wheels. If we put the dll into the python binary, then it would "just work"

Counting your conclusion as option 3, you're offering the status quo and two competing solutions to it. I agree that the status quo is unideal; a binary wheel should either include or be able to fetch everything necessary for a supported platform. But why should CPython package a runtime that it doesn't use? Which is more common - someone uses two C++ modules, or someone uses none of them?

I don't know how hard it is for the wheels to ship the DLL ("hard" here including any licensing or versioning issues, as well as the actual effort involved), but from a purely logical standpoint, it seems the most sane option. So I'm in favour of your option 2.

ChrisA

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