[Python-Dev] VC 7.1 maintenance?

[Mark Hammond]

I've been meaning to look at the MSI stuff - this thread prompted me to!

> Thomas Heller wrote:
> > Well, I would be much happier to build an installer with inno setup
> > instead of Martin's msi code, which I don't understand ;-(.
>
> I would be willing to explain it if you would ask questions :-(
> What is it that you don't understand about it?

On one hand, the code has almost no comments and assumes some knowledge of
the underlying MSI mindset.  On the other hand, it does seem to work!

With just a few tweaks (mainly relating to missing files), I managed to get
an MSI that appears to install correctly.  I think that is pretty cool :)  I
believe it has the basis for a reasonable MSI generator library.  The
hard-coding of the UI elements is unfortunate, but I see no alternative at
this stage.  Using distutils functions for building file lists etc would be
a nice for a few reasons, least of all for a future bdist_msi :)

Martin - links to articles you found enlightening while putting this
together is probably the largest omission - how did you come up with this?

Mark.