development installation docs should mention .pth for path configuration on Windows

[arien <regexbot@…>]

Currently, the installation docs say that:

"Alternatively, you can define your PYTHONPATH environment variable so that it includes the django subdirectory of django-trunk. This is perhaps the most convenient solution on Windows systems, which don't support symbolic links."

IMHO using a django.pth file is more convenient, because the user doesn't have to set PYTHONPATH for Python or mod_python.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

Using PYTHONPATH doesn't require you to change any system directories (such as site-packages), so it's a less intrusive solution.

I think this is a line-ball: some people will prefer one way and some people will prefer the other. We'd take a patch that was a link to a description of .pth files, but including a whole extra section on it is just making things longer. Our goal is to provide one way to do things, not every possible way.

[arien <regexbot@…>]

Sorry you don't like the patch. I can't say your characterization is fair, though.

Creating a symlink in site-packages on *nix is just as intrusive as placing a .pth file there on Windows. I left the PYTHONPATH alternative in precisely because it doesn't require write access to site-packages.

The docs make it sound like using symlinks would be the preferred solution on Windows as well if only Windows supported them (​it apparently does as of Vista), so I added a whole two sentences and one line of configuration to give Windows users (cross-platform) "Python symlinks".

Yes, there's redundancy, but IMHO the "one more way to do things" would be using symlinks. (Users of *nix are assumed to "just know" how to set environment variables, as opposed to Windows users who get a link, but they don't know about symlinks?

Feel free to close again.

[James Bennett]

Marking wontfix for the reasons Malcolm outlined above.