> * The creation of an *installer* is something quite different. An > installer for a py2exe based tool also doesn't need dependency > management.
Right. I wasn't really talking about py2exe (anymore), but about installers for libraries. > An installer for a pure-python package that made no attempt > to bundle dependencies might be nice, but I don't quite see how that > falls outside the scope of distutils/setuptools/etc. In other words, I > don't see why the installer can't bootstrap the 'normal' dependency > management which would be used if the package was installed any other > way or on other platforms. Perhaps that could be a solution. However, in package management systems that solve this properly, you also have proper uninstallation, which includes: - uninstallation is rejected if packages still depend on the to-be-removed package (or else offers to remove the relying packages as well) - uninstallation reference-counts, causing an automatically-installed package to be uninstalled if it is no longer needed, or else offers to compute-then-uninstall all packages which are no longer needed. The .exe/.msi installers do support uninstallation, but, alas, no dependency management. > * distutils already has the ability to create Windows installer > executables for pure-python apps/libs. I agree it would be nice if it > was an MSI but that is an implementation detail rather than > implementation requirement. Right - plus, distutils also supports creating MSIs. > How were Mike's packages fundamentally > different than that? Dunno. Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com