On Fri, 2018-03-23 at 10:41 +0100, Eduard Braun wrote:
pip is currently *not* included in Windows builds (it was for a short time when I last updated the devlibs - which we do not use anymore - but it was completely experimental back then and usage was not straightforward with some things not working as one would expect). Investigating the usage of pip is on my todo list but I did not find the time so far.
Very good to know. I'm very ignorant of the windows builds.
Even *if* we get pip do work properly you need to be aware that it's generally not possible to install any modules with it that contain binary components. pip is not magically allowing us to compile stuff on-the-fly. It can only work for pure Python modules (and even that fails occasionally, especially if any non-standard setups are attempted - like the one you seem to suggest).
We may not need binary builds, there are only a handful of cases where they'd be useful. Our own libs if they got python support would be shipped with Inkscape, while things like numpy if they were ever needed, could use either wheels or external installation.
Supporting that internally would be a perfect solution, but it shouldn't be the enemy of the good for the majority. ~90% of extensions are likely to not need any external dependencies, and ~90% of them will use pure python libraries. We can forgo ~1% of support being automatic.
Best Regards, Martin Owens