[Distutils] Self-contained boostrap scripts [was: Re: A new, experimental packaging tool: distil]

[PJ Eby]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Steve Dower <Steve.Dower at microsoft.com> wrote:
> And, I'm almost certain that most if not all existing ZIP tools on Windows will fail to open files with a shebang, since they've never had to deal with them.

Actually, the opposite is true, at least for 3rd-party (non-Microsoft)
archiving tools: they work even when there's a whole .exe file stuck
on the front.  ;-)

Some of them require you to rename from .exe to .zip first, but some
actually detect that an .exe is a stub in front of a zip file and give
you extraction options in an Explorer right-click.

So, no worries on the prepended data front, even if the extension is
.zip.  What you probably can't safely do is *modify* a .zip with
prepended data...  and there I'm just guessing, because I've never
actually tried.