[Distutils] small improvement of the script functionality under win32

[Trent Mick]

[M.-A. Lemburg wrote]
> [Lots of different techniques to trick Windows/DOS into starting
>  a Python script]
> 
> It is becoming rather obvious that the python -x trick is not
> sufficient for Windows/DOS.

I didn't even know that "-x" existed or how to use it properly. It
defeats my searching abilities to find documentation for it.

> E.g. perhaps we need something like:
> 
> -X n  : skip the first n lines in support of OS specific startup code
> 
> And then:
> 
> @echo off
> pathtopython -X 4 scriptfilenamehere %0 %1 ...
> exit
> # Start of Python code
> [program code goes here]

Sounds useful. Note that, until now, I hadn't really grokked the point
of this thread :). I was just throwing in my experiences of the Windows
shell. I don't use the distutils script handling stuff at all, so am not
a good person to make a call on doing this.

I just saw mention of effbot's "exemaker" today:
    http://effbot.org/zone/exemaker.htm
I *think* that having something like this would solve the problem. I've
done something similar to exemaker (i.e. create little stub launcher
executable for Python scripts that I distribute). I've preferred using
an executable launcher stub to using a batch file partially because of
the .bat syntax differences between Win9x and WinNT, but also because
sometimes when breaking a process started by a batch file with Ctrl+C
the shell will spit out "Would you like to stop the batch file also?" --
or something along those lines.

I don't know if adding something like exemaker would be feasible or even
desirable:
- might cause other headaches
- people might not want a launcher file separate from the script
  file itself

One benefit of a separate launcher file over a
script-in-batchfile-clothing approach: we might be able to take
advantage of python's "-m" option such that a Python script that can
also operate as a module (e.g. timeit.py, pydoc.py) could stay in the
Lib dir and the launch could be put in the bindir.

Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
TrentM at ActiveState.com