[Distutils] Windows installer, setuptools and distritools

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 06:03 PM 5/30/2007 +0200, henk-jan ebbers wrote:
>So:
>either a user uses the executable-windows-installer (with 
>postinstallation script, but dependencies are not resolved),
>or a user uses easy_install <egg> (without postinstallation script, 
>but dependencies are resolved)
>
>Is it possible to place something like 'easy_install <dependecies>' 
>in the postinstallation script?

Sure, although of course those dependencies won't have *their* 
post-install scripts run.

If you do this, you probably want to have the postinstall script 
register the files installed.  easy_install's --record option lets 
you write the installed files and directories to a text file, so you 
could read that and record the results.  That way, if the .exe is 
uninstalled, the other files will go along.

The downside to this is that uninstalling the .exe will uninstall 
dependencies that might actually be depended on by other packages 
that are installed later -- IOW, a total mess.

So, I'm not sure it's a good idea.  No, scratch that, I'm pretty sure 
it's NOT a good idea.

It might be better to use bdist_msi instead, if that has a way of 
handling dependencies.  (I'm not sure if it does.)