[Numpy-discussion] Win32 MSI

[F. David del Campo Hill]

Dear David,

	Without going into the inherent benefits of the MSI (Microsoft Installer) architecture over other EXE setup formats, its main advantage is that MSI packages can be added to Group Policy Objects in Active Directory (Windows domain controller database); this means that, as long as a piece of software comes in MSI format, it can be automatically installed on Windows systems from our central servers without need for our intervention. On top of that, Microsoft have created an open-source (no kidding!) package called WIX (Windows Installer XML; http://wix.sourceforge.net/) which allows you to create MSI packages for free. It does have conditional execution, though I have no idea if it can detect different types of processors.

	In my case, I need to install Python and Numpy on 30+ Windows systems; I have found Python already comes with MSI packages, and would also like to get a Numpy MSI, otherwise I will have to manually install it on all the systems. As far as I am concerned, I do not need the win32 superpack (all my systems are similar), and if there were different MSI packages for different processors I would not mind; it just has to be MSI.

	Sometimes, EXE setup packages are just MSI packages wrapped in an EXE file, that is why I tried to extract the files from your superpack (without luck).

Note: I do not work for Microsoft or receive any money from them; I am just an IT officer one of whose users needs Numpy for teaching. I do not know what Numpy does or doesn't do, I just need it installed fast.

	Thank you for your help.

	Yours,

		David


-----Original Message-----
From: numpy-discussion-bounces at scipy.org [mailto:numpy-discussion-bounces at scipy.org] On Behalf Of David Cournapeau
Sent: 24 March 2009 19:05
To: Discussion of Numerical Python
Subject: Re: [Numpy-discussion] Win32 MSI

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 3:13 AM, F. David del Campo Hill
<delcampo at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear Numpy Forum,
>
>        I have found the Win64 (Windows x64) Numpy MSI installer in Sourceforge (numpy-1.3.0b1.win-amd64-py2.6.msi), but cannot find the Win32 (Windows i386) one. I have tried unpacking the Win32 EXE installer package (numpy-1.3.0b1-win32-superpack-python2.6.exe) to see if the MSI installer could be found inside, but without luck. Does the package I look for exist, and if so, where could someone point me to where I can download it from?

No, it does not. The problem is that I need to add a way to execute
.msi from nsis (nsis is the software I use to build the superpack),
and I did not find a way when I tried - but it should be possible.

Now, I am not so familiar with msi: what does it bring compared to
.exe ? Would an exe installing a .msi solve your problems ? (windows64
has an msi because 64 bits implies SSE2, and as such we don't need to
check for CPU wo SSE).

cheers,

David
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