On 31 May 2015 at 11:41, Paul Moore
On 31 May 2015 at 10:14, Xavier Combelle
wrote: +1. The new embeddable Python distribution for Windows is a great step forward for this. It's not single-file, but it's easy to produce a single-directory self-contained application with it. I don't know if there's anything equivalent for Linux/OSX - maybe it's something we should look at for them as well (although the whole "static binaries" concept seems to be fairly frowned on in the Unix world, from what I've seen).
Just curious What is "the new embeddable Python distribution for Windows" ?
Python 3.5 ships a zipfile which contains a self-contained Python installation, intended for embedding. The idea is that you unzip it into your application directory, and use it from within your application (either via the embedding API, or using the included python.exe/pythonw.exe). It doesn't use the registry, or any global resources, so it's independent of any installed python that might be present.
By the way, IMO the new embeddable distribution is a pretty big deal on Windows. To make sure that it doesn't end up unnoticed, can I suggest we include a prominent "What's New" entry for it, and a section in "Python Setup and Usage" under "Using Python on Windows" for it? I'd hate to find that 3 or 4 versions from now, we're still trying to remind people that they can use the embeddable distribution, in the same way that executable zipfiles ended up an almost unknown feature for ages. Paul