Tim Peters wrote:
It seems that 'inst' holds nothing of value anymore except 'Makefile.in' and 'WinBuilders'.
WRT Windows, that's certainly true on my Windows-installer branch. I don't know whether any of it is still useful on Linux. You seem to think Makefile.in is still useful, but if that's true then I expect inst/configure.py is also still useful (it looks like configure.py is the intended way to create an actual makefile from the Makefile.in template).
Ah, true.
One thing for sure is that it will be helpful to get rid of as many decoys as possible;
+1
I propose moving those two items to the root and remove 'inst'.
I'd rather just remove the decoys. The process of building a Windows installer needs/creates three not-checked-in directories that are siblings of WinBuilders, and it's nicer to have those hiding under inst/ than cluttering the root of a checkout.
The Windows stuff will have no use for anything other than WinBuilders/, so if Makefile.in's Linux purpose would be better served by moving that elsewhere, that would be fine.
I don't think it would better or worse be served elsewhere, it's just that you see Makefile and wonder where it comes from. Looking in 'inst' isn't obvious at first sight. The problem I have with configure.py and Makefile.in in 'inst' is that they're not about installation anymore (which is what 'inst' stands for). They're about an in-place build. 'WinBuilders' OTOH *is* about building an installer. Therefore, just to reduce confusion, I would move Makefile.in and configure.py to the root (and remove the decoys). I'd also suggest we rename 'inst' to 'installer' so that it won't be confused with "instance". Then again, this is just me and my weird sense of aesthetics ;). Philipp