[Python-Dev] Windows installer and .pyc files mtime

[Mark Hammond]

[Guido]
> I expect this will be more of a problem as typical Windows users and
> installations (e.g. XP) become more security aware, software is

I expect you are correct.  My reason was a little more practical - certain
h2py.py generated scripts would takes *ages* to compile (way back when sub
GHz machines were the norm!) and this made the first pywin32 program they
used (often Pythonwin) very very slow to start.  I didn't want to give the
wrong impression about how slow it really was <wink>.

> I guess the way to implement it (and I believe Mark Hammond did indeed
> do this for win32all) is to run Python near the end of the installer
> with the compileall.py script as an argument.

Quite frankly, I would find a DOS window executing "compileall" a deadly
sin - so I got a little carried away and wrote a WISE extension, so that I
got a cute progress bar during the compilation :)

However, I haven't advocated or implemented this for the main installer I
would prefer to see that effort spent moving from WISE to Inno.  The next
Inno version will include the previously optional "scripting extensions",
and this should make it practical to use with Python.  Obviously, a WISE
extension wouldn't be heading in this direction.

FYI, the new version of inno is at http://www.jrsoftware.org/is4.php, and
its license (http://www.jrsoftware.org/files/is/license.txt) would seem a
better fit for Python than WISE.  Could make a cute little PSA sponsored
project <wink>.  Pity it uses pascal <frown>.

Mark