winpysetup easy setup of multiple python versions on a clean windows system

[Anthon van der Neut]

I am happy to announce the availability of winpysetup

version 0.2 dd 2015-05-18

Winpysetup ( https://bitbucket.org/ruamel/winpysetup/ ) allows setting
up a clean testing on Windows for multiple python versions without
downloading and installing MSI installers, prerequisites, all the time
waiting for the last to finish in order to click a few options to start
the next install.

- install Windows (or clone your clean Windows Virtual Machine)
- Download winpysetup.exe and start it.
  ( https://bitbucket.org/ruamel/winpysetup/downloads/winpysetup.exe )
- Once the program is done (now is a good time to make another snapshot
  if you run Windows in a VM), open a new Command Prompt (to get the
  change in PATH) and change to a directory without spaces in the path
  (e.g. C:\src).
- Run: hg clone --insecure https://hg@bitbucket.org/ruamel/minimal
- Change to the minimal directory and run tox.
- Watch how tox invokes py.test succesfully against Python
2.7/2.6/3.3/3.4 and pypy (you can of course run tox immediately on your
own, more interesting, code as well).

Installed items include: pip, easy_install, mercurial, tox, detox,
py.test and the Visual C compiler for Python 2.7

Special hooks can change the behavior of the installer. In particular: -
the list of python versions to install can be easily extended/reduced -
the list of default packages to install can be extended/reduced

winpysetup has been testen on:

    WinXP with Service Pack 2 (32 bit)
    Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit)

Feedback is welcome, in particular if tested on other Windows
environments to which I currently don't have access.

Thanks to Holger Krekel for confirming that automating a Windows box
setup would be a good idea, and to the VirtualBox developers for
making the execution of 250+ test installs less time consuming.