[Distutils] bdist_wininst compatibility with pythons and windows versions

[Mark Hammond]

On 7/06/2010 1:16 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
> While Trac 0.12 is about to be released, there is some uncertainty
> whenever new Distutils-generated installers are compatible with old
> versions of Windows and Python. There are some fears that installers
> generated on Vista and Windows 7 won't run on XP or 2000. Is that
> true?

That should be fine.  pywin32 has used Vista to generate the last few 
releases and it installs fine on XP (and probably 2000, but I can't say 
I actually tested that recently)

> Also is there a limit on the lowest version of Python that installer
> generated with Distutils to say 2.6.5 will run?

I'm not aware of any limitations from 2.2 forwards - if you use the 
--target-version option, bdist_wininst should select the appropriate 
'stub' executable for the version you specify (Python 2.6 includes stubs 
suitable for most 2.2-ish onwards)

Mark