[Zope3-dev] Re: AW: Re: AW: relying on win32api in windows supportofzc.zope3recipes

[Martijn Faassen]

Adam Groszer wrote:
> Monday, August 20, 2007, 3:05:45 PM, Stephan Richter wrote:
> 
>> Windows is pretty different in this respect. You really want to use an
>> installer, which means you get a wizard. People in Windows expect this
>> behavior and want it. It is quiet ignorant to ask them to use eggs instead.
> 
> Hackers on win32 can live with eggs, but beginners surely not.
> The wizard might be a simple wrapper around the scenes behind.
> Ask some parameters/path/anything, start the install script with
> python, provide  some progress feedback.

We have to be careful in separating the audiences here. Anyone using a 
buildout is expected to be an experienced user, probably a developer. 
They might be a beginning developer, in which case I consider installing 
a buildout *easier* than any of the alternatives, as a buildout ensures 
the whole environment is set up and only requires Python to be installed 
(and possibly python windows extensions).

For deploying to end users of applications, it would be nice if we had a 
way to turn a buildout for an application into a binary windows 
installer automatically. This is related to the work I hear ZC is doing 
to create rpms from buildouts. I'm not sure how frequently we expect 
people to install Zope 3 applications on Windows machines, so it depends 
on our priority as a community. I actually do have use cases for it, but 
I can live with buildouts.

Automatic installers for applications also involve other issues to be 
worked out - you often want to be able to update an application to a 
newer version without losing the database, for instance.

Regards,

Martijn