[Distutils] Distutils and Applications

[Paul Moore]

On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:22:53 +0100, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> IMHO, distutils should not evolve to a complete cross-platform
> installer replacement.

While I agree in principle, it would be nice to be able to use

    python setup.py bdist_wininst

to build an installer for an application, which installs OUTSIDE of
the Python install tree. The process of collecting together module
code, compiling C extensions, etc, is all the same. The postinstall
script (bdist_wininst only - maybe this would be useful for other
bdist commands?) lets you create shortcuts, etc should you wish. As
the postinstall script is run by the Python installation on the target
system, it can configure the package to know where Python is
installed, as well...

It's certainly not a "full" installer system, but it would be useful
for simple applications, which don't need the complexity of a full
installer. And anyone who wants to could abuse it for applications
bigger than its target :-)

Actually, I think that probably the only thing you'd need in the first
instance is a setup parameter for bdist_wininst which specified an
installation directory (C:\Program Files\MyApp) - and if it was
specified, the installer would allow the user to override the value.

Of course, for non-Windows systems, I've no idea what's needed...

Paul.