[Distutils] bdist_wininst

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> > I've just tried to create a wininst based version of my packages.
> > The installer works great except for a few nits:
> >
> > * the text box showing the description could be wider
> Probably the text shown in this box should be reformatted
> by bdist_wininst to better fit in the box...
> Currently the 'packager' has to do it manually.
> 
> > * no documentation files are installed -- is there a way to get
> >   those installed somewhere
> wininst follows distutils very closely and does not care about this.

Some more testing with the generic distutils install command
showed the same behaviour -- I think we have a problem in that
area... after all, packages without documentation are not really
all that useful.
 
> > * the installer install directly into \Python20 -- shouldn't
> >   it install to \Python20\Lib ? What's the standard here on Windows ?
> This is the standard on windows. \Python20\Lib is treated as location
> for modules belonging to core python.
> Note that this behaviour has one serious consequence:
> Since the distutils distributed with python are in \python20\lib\distutils,
> and installing a new version of distutils will install in \python20\distutils,
> and c:\python20\lib appears in sys.path *before* c:\python20,
> it requires special actions to actually *use* this newly
> installed distutils: The user has to delete or renamed or otherwise
> disable the directory \python20\lib\distutils.

Hmm, I think we should at least install the packages or
modules in a special subdir of \Python -- we wouldn't want
to clutter up the base installation directory with single
modules or other third packages, or would we ?

> > * the installer doesn't register itself in the Windows Software
> >   registry -- an uninstall is not possible (this would be *very*
> >   nice to have)
> This is something I have in my mind for a long time, but
> since distutils itself does not care about uninstalling I've never
> done it. The hooks are all there in wininst: A callback is called
> for every action taken on the filesystem during installation. It
> would be easy to write a log file which could be used for uninstallation.

Would be "nice to have" for 2.1 ;-) A way to set the installer
background bitmap and the one shown in the install dialog would
also be nice :)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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