Additional info for Windows users in MySQLdb section of install instructions

[bjf2000@…]

In reference to this page:
​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/install

In the "Get your database running" section, there's no guidance for Windows users for the MySQLdb item. The link leads to an extremely difficult compile-your-own copy that's not going to work out for a lot of people.

Much like the PostgreSQL item a little higher on the page, it would be helpful if you'd point to the unofficial compiled Windows version of MySQLdb. This is the one I found eventually (specifically, the "MySQL-python" section):
​http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs

[Ramiro Morales]

Actually, I don't think the Django documentation should be in the business of tracking, linking or recommending binaries of other projects. We should also drop our link to the Windows binaries of psycopg2 because that project has now its own website (​http://www.initd.org/psycopg/) and they maintain a link to these binaries there.

[bjf2000@…]

That's certainly an interesting perspective. Not everyone runs Linux, though. And the MySQL page has no mention of any other platforms.

Why not also remove the "Install Python" and "Install Apache" sections?

[Ramiro Morales]

Replying to bjf2000@…:

That's certainly an interesting perspective. Not everyone runs Linux, though. And the MySQL page has no mention of any other platforms.

Why not also remove the "Install Python" and "Install Apache" sections?

That's not a fair comparison.

For Python We don't link to platform-specific binaries, we direct users to the python.org web site and there they can find official binaries of Python.

We don't have any section in our docs where we point to any Apache download, much less to a third-party binary installer so I don't know what do you mean.

Unfortunately we can't replace the authors and/or communities behind MySQL and MySQLdb, if they can't provide official Windows binaries and provide links to them from their Web sites plus the accompanying documentation there is nothing we can do about that.

I'm closing this ticket.