According to the following "Deprecate bdist_wininst" discussion, bdist_wininst can be deprecated:
https://discuss.python.org/t/deprecate-bdist-wininst/1929

bdist_wininst uses the mbcs encoding which is only available on Windows. There is bpo-10945 open for 8 years to suggest to use UTF-8 or use the Unicode (wide character) flavor of the Windows API to support running bdist_wininst on non-Windows platforms and to be able to distribute binaries which don’t depend on the ANSI code page.

I propose to deprecate it in Python 3.9, because of bpo-10945 issue. I don't propose to plan bdist_wininst removal yet.

As an user, it’s annoying to have to run a GUI to install something, whereas pip can install dependencies using wheel packages in a command line interface, transparently, without bugging the user with dialog boxes.

When I look at numpy or Cython: they don’t distribute .exe installers, but binary wheel packages for Windows. I understood the wheel packages is the recommended way to distribute binaries on Windows, and so that bdist_wininst is kind of deprecated.

Donald Stufft wrote:

"For what it’s worth, PyPI doesn’t even allow you to upload bdist_wininst (See PEP 527 2) anymore, so if you’re looking at PyPI to determine usage, you’re going to get no usage whatsoever for anything recent.

I don’t have any idea if other people are still using bdist_wininst and distributing them through some other mechanism."

Paul Ganssle wrote:

"From my perspective, nearly all direct invocations of setup.py are currently or are eventually heading for deprecation. PEP 517 doesn’t provide hooks to generate anything other than sdist or wheel, so basically all commands not actually triggered (directly or indirectly) by calling a PEP 517 front-end are suspect."


Attached PR deprecates bdist_wininst.


See also the related issue bpo-37468 "Don't install wininst*.exe on non-Windows platforms". bdist_wininst only works on Windows: see bpo-10945 and commit 72cd653c4ed7a4f8f8fb06ac364b08a97085a2b5.