2009/4/9 David Cournapeau <da...@ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp>: > Ben Finney wrote: >> >> I presume, by “meta-requirement”, you're showing awareness that this >> is something very much dependent on motivating people to actually >> create those installers for each and every package. >> > > Yes, and eggs decreases this motivation, as eggs are cross-platform (if > only python code of course), so people do not build .exe anymore. With a > wininst/msi-based installation, you get more features, which fit more > with what many windows users expect (software shown in install/remove > panel, can be removed). So those windows users have a worse install > experience than before eggs were widespread. > >> >> Does “any machine” include those without MSI-creation tools? I imagine >> (but would love to know otherwise) that the creation of an MSI package >> cannot be done on any arbitrary Windows machine, but needs special >> (external to distutils) programs and/or libraries installed first. >> > > No, it doesn't need anything special, as it is included in python > (msilib is available at least in python >= 2.5 stdlib). Actually, you > can build almost any extension from wine as long as mingw compilers are > an option, msi or wininst-based. Msi in particular have features that > eggs will most likely never be able to support well (group policy > support, which is something that some numpy/scipy users have regularly > requested).
Yes, I am very much aware (hence, as you noted, my use of the term "meta-requirement") that this is more a social issue than a technical one - although I believe that technical decisions can influence the social side. Thanks to David for answering the rest of your queries much better than I would have managed! Paul. _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
