On Oct 2, 2006, at 21:24, Bob Ippolito wrote: > Using easy_install is quite easy -- you type "easy_install > WhatYouNeed" and press return. That's it. Users currently need some > familiarity with Terminal in order to get anything done with Python > anyway.
Not necessarily. I know one person who uses nothing but IDLE and is quite scared of the command line. On Oct 2, 2006, at 23:12, Bob Ippolito wrote: > Well it's possible to create an association with .egg files to open up > a terminal and run easy_install, but that's kinda pointless because > nobody downloads eggs manually. I know lots of users who would prefer to download packages and then install them, rather than do everything on one step. There are various reasons for this: - You can decide to download only from trustworthy places, or install only packages handed to you by a trustworthy person. - You can archive the packages you download, so you always know exactly what you installed and you can always reproduce an installation at a later time. - You can install on a machine without an internet connection (laptops on the road, high-security sites, cluster nodes, ...) - If you are behind a strict firewall, you can download using your preconfigured browser and don't have to configure proxies for additional tools. Therefore, if it is possible to download and install eggs manually, then I am sure there would be a client base for a GUI-based installer associated with .egg files. That said, I have to add that I am not a big fan of setuptools. Last time I checked, they didn't handle installation of C header files in a useful way. Since most of my packages include C header files and depend on other packages' C header files, setuptools are of little use for me. Konrad. _______________________________________________ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
