It needed a name. I hate the word "Installer", but it expresses in one word the most common use of my stuff.
I'll be releasing a beta for Linux real soon. Only some of the tricks are Windows only (such as self-extracting executables, which is only culturally appropriate on Windows, anyway).
But more importantly it's not just for installing. The Python I use (interactively) on my wife's machine is 1 directory with about 6 files in it. On my Linux box I've been using the std lib in a .pyz for about a month now. Someone distributing a pure Python package could instead ship 3 files (imputil.py, archive.py and <package>.pyz) with the "install" consisting of adding one line to site.py in the user's perfectly normal Python installation.
And yeah, I solved the "manifest" problem, too. Mine predates Distutils, so don't accuse me of duplicate effort, (I pointed them to it a couple times). It uses ConfigParser and a config file, so it allows finer control.
While .pyz's are completely cross-platform, I have yet to work out endianness issues in the other archive I use (which should probably be zip format - it can hold anything). And at the "Installer" end, I have yet to work out how things should work on non-ELF/COFF platforms (where I can't append the archive to the executable). But there aren't any technical issues involved; just lack of time.
So no, it's not just for Windows; and no, it's not just for creating standalones (though that's what almost everyone uses it for).
Gordon, I'm sorry, but from this description I still have no idea what your stuff is (and I forgot the URL so I can't look it up). For example, if it's not (just) for installing, what *is* it for? What is the ``"manifest" problem'' and how did you solve it? Also, note that editing site.py is a no-no! You can create/edit sitecustomize.py, but you should leave site.py alone! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)