I use to install apps (in Windows) using tools like Revo Uninstaller, that show the silent fingerprint of an installation.
In this Python 3.13 case, it has detected a big quantity of registry entries, specially in the branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\[xxxxxx]\Components
Around 4241 new entries have been added.
You may think: “I suppose that, if they are there, is because the’re all important, why do you dare to doubt?”
Some of them are simple paths to “useless” files, for example “pystats.h” file, that has a very low probability of being used by a python programmer.
So, this registry branch seems to keep track (very inefficiently!!) of all the installed python files. It’s like a mirror file system. You may think: “It’s ok, because it will be used to track files when uninstalling. And again, why do you dare to doubt?”.
With this philosophy in mind, the registry turns into an absurd file system into the file system.
Every installed application with thousands of files will replicate its structure (!!) inside the registry, not even trying to compress the humongous list of thousands files (it would be easy!). All of them will be thrown painlessly to the registry basket, no problem. Even knowing that this files list is not useful for Windows, just for the app uninstaller, then, why storing this junk in the registry?
See what Jeff Atwood (the creator of StackOverflow) said in 2007 (and still appliable, sadly…) : “[The registry] has slowly become a trash heap of miscellaneous junk settings for every rinky-dink application on the planet”
So my question is: Is there another cleaner way to install Python?