[Distutils] installation paths when using 'bdist_wininst'

[Stefan Seefeld]

hi there,

I'm trying to package a tool that uses some data files.
As the 'install_data' command is used to install these
files. As the exact location of these data files is only
known at installation time, I extended that command to
generate a 'config.py' module containing the correct path
which the other modules then can use to find the data.
This approach is quite common with build systems based
on make/autoconf, so I'm adopting it to a python project, too.

That seems to work fine when I run 'python setup.py install'.

However, I just tried the 'bdist_wininst' command and
it stops working: it appears the 'bdist_wininst' calls
the 'install' command with the 'install_data' argument
set to a temporary path, i.e. one that is only used during
the packaging, but which is not the ultimate location of the
data files after installation via the windows installer.

This brings up a couple of questions:

* how does the windows installer determine where to install
   the package's files ?

* how can I generate my 'config.py' file such that it correctly
   points to that location ?

* are there other ways to find out this location ?

Thanks for any help,

		Stefan