[Distutils] Make ez_setup.py/easy_install $PATH aware

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sun Sep 17 17:29:40 CEST 2006


On 9/17/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> At 02:38 PM 9/17/2006 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> >BTW, if you really want to make easy_install.exe available on the
> >command line without needing a PATH entry, you can do what python.exe
> >does: create a registry key
> >
> >HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\easy_install.exe
[...]
> Unfortunately, the details it gives are wrong.  Neither cmd.exe,
> command.com, nor bash will find a program registered this way, at least on
> my Win2K PC.  This appears to *only* work for the Start/Run menu.  Which
> isn't a bad start; I imagine that setuptools "GUI scripts" should be
> installed this way on Windows until/unless we get a way to give them menu
> entries or icons.
[...]
> As far as I can tell, *despite* what the MSDN docs say about App Paths, it
> is strictly a GUI facility and has no effect on command
> shells.  (Interestingly, the lower-level SDK's show why - CreateProcess()
> ignores app paths, and only ShellExecute takes it into account.  That's how
> I figured out that I could use the "start" command as well as the Start/Run
> menu option.)

Sorry about that. I use 4NT, and it never occurred to me that CMD
didn't do this as well. Does this mean that on a standard PC, with
CMD.exe, typing "python" at he command prompt (with Python installed
from the standard installer) doesn't work???!??

[A quick test in VMWare later]

Wow! It really doesn't! That seems, well, "less than ideal" :-( How
does anyone live with that? I guess command-line Python users on
Windows are used to needing to fix up PATH...

Thanks for correcting my mistake.
Paul.

Paul.


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