[Distutils] Including documentation into a Windows installer

[Thomas Heller]

> I'm trying to get a number of files into the binary package which are
> considered as documentation.
> 
> For RPMs, I simply do
> 
> [bdist_rpm]
> doc_files = ANNOUNCE,CREDITS,LICENCE,README,README.dom,README.pyexpat,README.sgmlop,doc,demo,test
> 
> Even though some of these names are actually directories, the RPM
> building process uses the source distribution to determine which files
> to include. Specifically, these names get listed as %doc directives,
> which are then installed into /usr/doc/<package>.
> 
> Since there is no dedicated documentation directory on Windows, I'd
> like to put these files into a directory xmldoc next to the _xmlplus
> directory which is the Python package. I managed to compute the list
> of file names and directories myself using the FileList class.
> 
> How can I get a set of files into the Windows installer, while
> preserving the directory structure?
The windows installer is similar to the install command.
The install command:
1. Runs build to build everything and install it into build\libxxx directory
2. Copies the build\libxxx directory somewhere into the python path.

The bdist_wininst command:
1. Runs build to build everything and install it into build\libxxx directory.
2. Build a zip-file from the build\libxxx directory, and append this
to the exe-stub to create the windows installer.

The windows installer, on the target system:
Simply unpacks everything on the python path.

So your only choice is to somehow copy your files
into the build directory, and you are done.
Maybe you need to write a special install_docs
class to do this...

Thomas