Hi David,

You might consider a different approach to this installation problem entirely. Rather than build your own installer, use conda and binstar to create your own "package collection". Conda is BSD and completely open and free. Binstar is a free service and you could replace it with your own conda repository if you wanted to (it's not difficult to make a conda repository --- just a directory of packages and an index file).

The advantage is that users will then be able to easily manage the collection, create environments, and you will be able to more easily update their installation. This works right now. You could also do some work and make it even easier for your users.

What you do:

1) Create conda packages for all libraries that are not already in repositories -- you could also copy the packages into your own repo.

2) Create a meta-package that is your "distribution" (that's all Anaconda is...)

3) Create a binstar account and upload your conda packages and the meta-package to binstar (the binstar command-line client makes this easy).

What users do:

1) Install miniconda: http://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/index.html (Just Python and conda the package manager)

2) conda config -f --add channels http://conda.binstar.org/<your_org_name>

3) conda create -n <your_meta_environment> <your_meta_package_name>

You could even wrap up the steps 1-3 in a simple NSIS installer (I'm sure Ilan could even give you the miniconda installer NSIS source so that you could just make your own installer that effectively does those things). You could also skip the environment creation, but creating the environment would let other meta-packages be installed and share resources without fighting over version numbers for competing packages.

Ilan and I have been at this for a long while now, and we think we've found an approach that should scale with conda and binstar. The nice thing about using Miniconda is that your users now can install packages from many more people than just what you provide as well.

If you have questions feel free to email and ask them to the anaconda@continuum.io mailing list or the conda mailing list.

Best,

-Travis

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 8:52 AM, David Baddeley <david_baddeley@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone knows of an easy (or relatively easy) way of putting together a scientific python distribution with a one-click installer. I've got a python package with _lots_ of dependencies and would like to give users (with relatively limited computer skills) a simple way of installing python, my package, and all the dependencies. I have previously told people to download EPD, upgrade wxpython, and install a couple of additional packages (which is already pushing it in terms of what the users are comfortable with). The switch to canopy (with the accompanying move to a package management system in which one has to manually select which packages to install) makes this infeasible. The alternative distributions (PythonXY, Anaconda etc ...) are all either 32 bit only, or lack many of the packages I need, meaning that I'd need to get users to download a much longer list of additional packages. I want a python distribution, rather than just a py2exed version as parts of my code don't work well with py2exe.

Has anyone encountered this situation, and what did you do?

many thanks,
David

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Travis Oliphant

Continuum Analytics, Inc.

http://www.continuum.io