[Distutils] Prerelease: bdist_wininst

[Greg Ward]

On 19 June 2000, Thomas Heller said:
> > > I found the compressed base64 encoded bytes of the exe-file
> > > nice in bdist_wininst, but there will also be another solution.
> > 
> > I find it really weird, but if it works...
> It's not really my own idea, /F uses something similar in his squeeze
> utility, and also in PythonWorks.
> 
> The advantage is that there only is a single file.

Yeah, but if you can just as easily find that other file through
os.path.dirname(sys.modules['distutils']), then I don't see a big win.
There are already 20 or 30 source files in the Distutils, what's one
more?  (OK, OK, even if it is a binary.)  The only problem I can see is
putting a binary file in CVS and distributing it in the source
distribution, but I think I know the right way to do that.  ("cvs admin
-kk wininst_stub.exe" should do the trick.)

> I would certainly prefer to include the whole source into distutils,
> but first: currently distutils cannot build exe-files (not even
> on windows), secondly how would the exe been build under unix?
> Third, can distutils _install_ exe-files?

Are you sure?  The code (implementation of 'link_executable()') is
definitely there in UnixCCompiler and MSVCCompiler.  I don't recall
having tested it thoroughly, but it certainly exists...

> Well, it is certainly not nearly finished, but I would like to get some
> more feedback from users before working on it.
> So yes, please go on, check it in.

Arg, it's getting late... tomorrow!  Can you just resend it to include
Rene's fix (and any other recent changes) please?  Thanks...

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - Unix bigot                                  gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
Know thyself.  If you need help, call the CIA.