[Distutils] Distutils windows binaries...

[Mark Hammond]

> If I write a script to generate all the details of the
> distribution - files
> list, etc - how do I force the script to make it into a
> binary distro? Do I
> modify the arguement list passed to the script to 'fake' that
> it was called
> with this? Cos I may well just want to run a script and have
> that as default
> behaviour.

One of my scripts does:

"""
# Default and only distutils command is "py2exe" - save adding it to the
# command line every single time.
if len(sys.argv)==1 or \
   (len(sys.argv)==2 and sys.argv[1] in ['-q', '-n']):
    sys.argv.append("py2exe")
"""
Hacky, but it works :) (and presumably you want 'bdist_wininst')

> I have seen that there is the facility to build extension
> modules into the
> distro by actually building them from source - is it
> recommended to do it
> this way - what about including pre-built extensions? I have
> tried adding
> them to the 'data_files' option and it seems to work -
> although by default
> they don't end up where I would expect. Has anyone else
> played with that?

I think that by default, the "binary" distributions all ship binaries of
your extension modules too.  Thus, if your binary distribution has an
extension module, the distribution is specific to a particular version of
Python.

> I know you can change the bitmap displayed during the install
> but can you
> change the icon that is displayed for the *.exe that is generated?

I dont think bdist_wininst does, but py2exe does.

Mark